Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Jeremy Roussak on September 13, 2017, 02:55:17 pm
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Lower Wain With Force. Thoughts?
Jeremy
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No comments yet, so I try: Might it be the brownish color of the water that is odd? Looks somehow "dirty". I wonder how a B&W would look like.
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A thought: you were there. Sorry to see there aren't more thoughts, Jeremy.
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A thought: you were there. Sorry to see there aren't more thoughts, Jeremy.
Maybe it's not very thought-provoking. :(
Might it be the brownish color of the water that is odd? Looks somehow "dirty". I wonder how a B&W would look like.
The river was in spate, so the water was brownish. I rather liked it, but I can see others might not. This one doesn't work in b&w, I think, but I've posted another which might be better.
Jeremy
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I definitely prefer the B&W
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The two shots help to demonstrate, perhaps, how much more difficult it is to make a good waterfall shot with the water flowing away from you.
Jeremy
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Jeremy, I think you have made things as difficult as you possibly could for yourself with this shot.
You have what looks like deep shade in the water to the left of the shot and bright harsh specular highlights on the water to the right of the shot, plus deep shade under the green bushes in the upper background, with harsh specular highlights on top of those same bushes.
If it was midday on a clear blue sky day when you were there and you couldn't go back when the light was better, then you had little choice, but if you could have been there at a different time of day, or there were passing clouds then perhaps waiting for a short while until the shade and highlights were more equalised across the entire scene, it would have rendered for you a much more pleasingly composed image, but the variation in light that you do have here, makes this image look like you were in a rush to move on - I am sorry if that was not the case, but perhaps if you had spent a little bit more time studying the light and waiting for the best moment of softer light that helped to equalise the highlights and the shadows (shooting with greatly reduced DR in other words), it would have improved this shot considerably.
When we arrive at a scene, we first look for something interesting to shoot, then we try to find a composition that 'feels' right, but then we should also look at the light and decide whether it is good enough or not and if not then we should wait until the light is good enough, but if we can't get all three of these things the first time we visit an area, then we should go back when we can.
In short, before you trigger a shot, look up and around you to see what the light is doing and try not to cram too many stops of light into the shot, even if the manufacturer of your camera told you that it could cope with it, because you want the light to naturally sculpt the scene and work with you, not against you and in this shot IMHO, the light is definitely working against you.
Dave
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Jeremy,
I like the composition, but that light you were dealing with ....whew. Very difficult to render a scene like this under those lighting conditions. I shoot a lot of rivers, streams, and waterfalls so I get it. You are there and the choice is to try to make something of it or walk away. More often than not I try to make something of it, then it sits in my archives because I'm just not pleased with what I can get out of it. About all you can do is reduce contrast substantially and try to pull the highlights down enough to even it out a little.
I see mention of the black and white, but I haven't seen that yet. I do think it probably would work better with black and white since you can typically get away with a little more contrast with that presentation.
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I think this is a case where too much "image quality" kills the image.
There are basically three tools for cencentrating the viewer on part of the image:
a) Selective lighting;
b) Selective focus
c) Selective blur.
With colour, you get to add "vivid colour" but it is subservient to the others, particulaly the lighting
In this case, both a) and c) are working against you. There is a big block of vivid green leaves that is also working against you.
B&W helps with the colour problem, and also allows you the option of faking the relative lighting by using the colour sliders to reduce (or increase!) eg the green in the mix-down.
Less dof would have helped a lot... aside from the selctive sharpness effect, you could pull up the exposure and blow-out the bushes. If you try that when they are pin-sharp the result will be ugly (or "crunchy," to (mis-?)quote Slobodan).
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Yeah, the harsh light kind of killed whatever other good stuff might be in the shot.