Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Arlen on August 18, 2018, 09:11:41 pm
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A penny (or the market rate) for your thoughts. :)
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I'll give you tuppence, at least. On my uncalibrated laptop screen, though, I can see enough detail in the ground to pique my interest but not enough to make anything out, which is rather frustrating. I appreciate the lighting decisions, but...
Jeremy
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impressive print i expect.
Looks straight out of science fiction
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When viewed on my calibrated monitor I believe Arlen has the balance spot on.
Lovely.
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Beautiful imograph(?)
;-)
Rob
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It is spectacular.
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Beautiful imograph(?)
The judgment depends on whether it is a composite or a result of the heavy smoke from forest fires.
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The judgment depends on whether it is a composite or a result of the heavy smoke from forest fires.
My assumption is that a composite would be announced as such. Early morning fog can also create a sun visual like this.
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The judgment depends on whether it is a composite or a result of the heavy smoke from forest fires.
Since he lives in Oregon, I'm thinking forest fires. I've just returned from Washington state and the sunsets reliably looked just like that. The use of the gradient tool is pretty obvious, but none the less the image certainly has impact.
Kent in SD
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First, thanks to all of you for taking the time to comment. But let me jump back in now to make sure the nature of the image is clear, so that no one feels misled. It is a composite, and it has been my intention from the beginning to describe its genesis, after letting you take a look at it first. I thought there were clues in the image that might lead some of you to that conclusion. But in the end, I would like to ask how much does it matter, for what reasons, and to whom.
Degrub is on the right track with “looks straight out of science fiction”. So are Slobodan and Kent with their references to forest fires. The forest fire smoke-filtered image of the setting sun was captured recently in central Oregon. As I looked at it, I was reminded of images I have seen of rather dim red stars in other solar systems. I wondered if I could construct an interesting picture along those lines from images already in my collection.
I came up with several candidates, but one old Kodachrome of a misty evening at the Grand Canyon really seemed amenable to my vision. So that is what you see here, a reworked version of that slide and the smoky sun combined to bring the vision to life. Rather other-worldly, but on the edge so as not to be completely separated from reality. With the larger-than-life sun being both an enhanced visual element, and a clue that it may not be a “straight” photograph.
I knew I was taking a chance by posting it here, but this is the User Critiques section after all, not the Landscape Showcase. The main question I want to address is, is the image visually interesting and/or pleasing? If not, let it fall on its merits. If so, does it matter how it was made, so long as it’s not represented as a photographic record? That is a question I’ve been asking myself. The overwhelming majority of my images are straight photographs. But more and more, I am attracted to building images that occur first in my head, by whatever means necessary.
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The main question I want to address is, is the image visually interesting and/or pleasing? If not, let it fall on its merits. If so, does it matter how it was made, so long as it’s not represented as a photographic record? That is a question I’ve been asking myself. The overwhelming majority of my images are straight photographs. But more and more, I am attracted to building images that occur first in my head, by whatever means necessary.
Unless a photo is taken with the intention of representing reality (e.g. a photo of something being sold on ebay,) for me a photo is all about eliciting an emotional response. How you get there isn't a major factor for me. I'm not a purist.
Kent in SD
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It is a lovely digital illustration.
Having said that, I remember Pete Turner playing with color gels and sandwiching it with straight Kodachromes to achieve a similar effect, so it is not purely “digital.”
While I enjoy it, it does matter to me whether it is an illustration, or more or less straight photograph. The latter I would hold in higher esteem if having a similar feel and impact as an illustration. Authenticity matters.
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To me, it matteres not a jot how it's been made: it's a beautiful image and that's what counts.
Stock library catalogues used to be full of similar shots, but this one is better than any I remember.
Congrats on a clever piece of work! And no, no disclosure is required: this is 2018!
Rob
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I think it's a terrific image. So long as you identify it as a composite if/when posting to photo-sharing sites, social media or offering prints, by all means do whatever works!
-Dave-
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It is a lovely digital illustration.
Having said that, I remember Pete Turner playing with color gels and sandwiching it with straight Kodachromes to achieve a similar effect, so it is not purely “digital.”
While I enjoy it, it does matter to me whether it is an illustration, or more or less straight photograph. The latter I would hold in higher esteem if having a similar feel and impact as an illustration. Authenticity matters.
Slobodan, you're in extreme danger of slipping into pedantry.
Just as well the shot shows no streets!
Why do you give a damn how it was made? It grabs you, and that's that: it isn't a treatise on legal celestial/terrestrial proportionate representation, after all.
I could look at a lot of pictures shown on this forum and say bloody hell, what a load of crap! Water, clouds, skies, trees, corn, grass, desert never look like that; God is using the paints straight out of the tins today!
You see the problem with hitting other, strongly-held views on some genres?
;-)
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It is a lovely digital illustration.
Having said that, I remember Pete Turner playing with color gels and sandwiching it with straight Kodachromes to achieve a similar effect, so it is not purely “digital.”
While I enjoy it, it does matter to me whether it is an illustration, or more or less straight photograph. The latter I would hold in higher esteem if having a similar feel and impact as an illustration. Authenticity matters.
Then it's just as well the Gods didn't leave us a colour chart otherwise the authenticity of much we see here would be in question.
;-)
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... Why do you give a damn how it was made? It grabs you, and that's that...
For the same reason people faint in the presence of, say, the original Mona Lisa painting, but are totally cold toward gazillion reproductions of it. Authenticity matters. Especially in photography.
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It has an Asian, etherial quality to it regardless of how it was conceived or presented.
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For the same reason people faint in the presence of, say, the original Mona Lisa painting, but are totally cold toward gazillion reproductions of it.
Even if the faint-inducing “original” is a reproduction, as the one in The Louvre is rumoured to be?
In other words, it’s all in the mind.
Like others, I care more about the result than the method.
In this case, the result is excellent. Even for us out here in the Scary, Smokey West.
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Well it’s certainly eye catching. It’s well executed and a bit of fun. Not sure how I feel about it as a landscape, although it is a landscape.
It strikes me as commercial, and that’s not to denigrate the image. It would make a very striking cover for a sci-fi novel.
The one thing that does bother me, that I don’t like, is the dark grey border.
I would say well done on the image and for provoking a discussion.
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For the same reason people faint in the presence of, say, the original Mona Lisa painting, but are totally cold toward gazillion reproductions of it. Authenticity matters. Especially in photography.
Slobodan! Nobody will buy that as comparable!
Anyway, unless close up and personal, they won't get to see much of it.
;-)
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Even if the faint-inducing “original” is a reproduction, as the one in The Louvre is rumoured to be?
In other words, it’s all in the mind...
My point exactly. Knowing whether something is fake makes all the difference. Believability matters.
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For the same reason people faint in the presence of, say, the original Mona Lisa painting, but are totally cold toward gazillion reproductions of it. Authenticity matters. Especially in photography.
That's the authenticity of attribution and provenance which is often questionable. The authenticity to and of the subject is an entirely different consideration, as is the authenticity of the process and medium.
The difficulty is there are probably as many differing opinions based on differing beliefs about the authenticity of photographic images as there are those who make them. There are also many differing opinions on the authenticity, parameters and classification concerning various photographic genres. We see many examples of these differences here.
Perhaps the best we can do is to have our own beliefs and parameters regarding the various issues around authenticity but on no account expect others to comply to them.
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Well said, Keith. I suspect it won't be more than another generation, maybe two, before the whole idea of photographic authenticity is dead as a doornail.
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Well said, Keith. I suspect it won't be more than another generation, maybe two, before the whole idea of photographic authenticity is dead as a doornail.
That will probably happen. Already with this generation, where Instagram rules with its filters and 15-sec attention span. However, even this generation looks at catfishing with disdain.
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That will probably happen. Already with this generation, where Instagram rules with its filters and 15-sec attention span. However, even this generation looks at catfishing with disdain.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sWjDbU4KT2M
Nothin' noo under the Sun, even online.
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"Catfishing" is a practice on social media to post pictures of oneself that do not correspond with reality. Much younger, altered, photoshopped beyond recognition, etc.
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"Catfishing" is a practice on social media to post pictures of oneself that do not correspond with reality. Much younger, altered, photoshopped beyond recognition, etc.
Yes, I looked for it on Google. Just an extension of PS into virtual (but unreal) life, then.
Where are you picking up all this teenage nonsense, Slobodan? Is your daughter trying to "educate" you? All my young gave up long ago, but still, to be fair, it's why I have computers and this little iPad, something I would never have dreamed of buying, but which has turned out to be invaluable to letting me listen to music whilst I sit in restaurants, locking out the din, the echoes from tiled floors and people competing to make themselves heard above the din. Sarah Moon's pictures never looked better than with a glass of house red in my hand!
So far, it has not followed me to bed. There are limits no gentleman will abuse!
:-)
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... Where are you picking up all this teenage nonsense, Slobodan? Is your daughter trying to "educate" you?...
Let’s just say the school of hard knocks. Daughter just provided ex-post theoretical underpinning ;)
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I appreciate all the further input and discussion on this subject. The question of how much image "manipulation" is acceptable comes up often, but at some level we nearly all do it. Adjusting things like exposure, contrast and saturation is standard, almost required. Removing objects is common, and pretty easy to justify at one level. An offending soda can, or a jet contrail, in an otherwise pristine scene shouldn't be there, and on another day might well not have been; so just get rid of them in post, with a clear conscience. Go a step further and remove power lines if the purpose of the image is artistic rather than reportage. How about adding things? Filling in problematic areas or extending the canvas with content-aware fill?
For me a brighter red line to cross has been the addition of significant objects that weren't actually there. In most cases, I still hesitate to step over it.
I'm not wholly unsympathetic to Slobodan's position. It does initially feel like a superb image--even one created for artistic rather than documentary purposes--that was captured completely in-camera is somehow superior (more authentic) to a similar one that was constructed at least partially in software. As if the latter were somehow cheating, skipping the hard work and passing off a fake as equal to an original. But that's probably because most of us here are photographers rather than digital artists, and we value the work of our own kind over that of others. However, I can tell you that creating an image in your mind and executing it in software does not necessarily skip the hard work; at least not for me, in the case of the image you see above.
Moreover, how much of a great camera capture is simply luck? In this era when everyone carries a camera in their pocket, a lucky no-talent rank amateur can be at the right place at just the right moment to catch a rare event and capture an image that legions of dedicated professionals have worked towards for years and missed.
So I guess my main point is that there really are no bright lines, supportable by objective argument, when creating images for 'artistic' purposes. The topic is by nature subjective, and there is room for multiple approaches and points of view.
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... I'm not wholly unsympathetic to Slobodan's position...
Neither am I toward your efforts and the result ;)
Having mentioned Pete Turner, otherwise my inspiration, let me bring up two of his images to illustrate my point and provide some food for thought, one manipulated, the other straight.
The first one is The Giraffe. Apparently, he had an overexposed image of a giraffe and decided to duplicate that slide by placing color gels behind and increasing contrast. There is no question in viewers' minds that the result is an artistic interpretation. Nobody believes that the sky was that red (or green, etc.)
The second, straight one, is the Rolling Ball. He shot it I believe in 1959 by pre-visualizing the shot and waiting for several hours until everything fell in place the way he envisaged it. The lens was 105mm.
I like both shots. I do not rank them as one being better or more worthy than the other. Why? Because they clearly belong to different categories. The same is with Jerry Uelsmann photo montages: they are clearly so. My problem arises when something tries to look like real, but isn't.
In case of your photograph, I already said I like it. As someone mentioned, it would be a terrific cover for a sci-fi book or magazine cover. If I were a sci-fi aficionado, I would probably put a print on my wall. Heck, if I wouldn't know anything about photography, I might put it on the wall even if not a sci-fi fan. But, as a photographer, I wouldn't. I would still pay you a compliment, though :)
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I take your points. Fair enough.
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Where are you picking up all this teenage nonsense, Slobodan? Is your daughter trying to "educate" you? All my young gave up long ago, but still, to be fair, it's why I have computers and this little iPad, something I would never have dreamed of buying, but which has turned out to be invaluable...
So you don't treat your iPad like this (https://www.snotr.com/video/8965/So_papa_how_do_you_like_the_iPad_we_got_you), then?
Jeremy
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So you don't treat your iPad like this (https://www.snotr.com/video/8965/So_papa_how_do_you_like_the_iPad_we_got_you), then?
Jeremy
Excellent!
Rob
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I love the colours and the idea. Where it falls down for me is in the 'sun' being too much to the fore in the image.
The air is full of smoke and visibility falls off into the distance - except for the big red ball in the sky. Personally I would introduce some veiling over the sun to give it a feeling it is shining through the smoke. As it is my impression is that the orb is just composited into the picture.
Jim
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I love compositing, therefore it strikes my fancy just fine. I did realize immediately it was a composite but then most of mine are quite obvious.
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Thanks for your thoughts, Chris and Jim. I will consider the suggestion.
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Slobodan, after reflection on your Turner example it occurs to me that your judgment of a composite seems to hinge on intention, rather than strictly on the image itself. If you perceive that the artist's intent may be deception, you judge it more harshly. In this case the less-clever deceptions are the most likely to be detected and downgraded, whereas truly ingenious deceptions may escape unscathed. But if the artist makes it crystal clear what has been done, as for the giraffe, the image loses no standing due to manipulation. Correct?
What if the artist's intent is ambiguity, to make the viewer stop and think about it?
By the way, the winds here have changed and are coming from the north, bringing smoke from British Columbia and Washington fires to cover almost the entire state of Oregon with Level Red (unhealthy for everyone) air quality. Great for making smoky pictures, but we may have to wear N95 particle masks to get them.
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Personally I have a different set of rules for editing/processing my own photos than for judging what I find acceptable or objectionable when done by other people. Because my own rules are formed out of my particular tastes & habits, and have also varied over time, I think it would be silly of me to expect anyone else to abide by or even care about them.
-Dave-