Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Jonathan Wienke on November 19, 2006, 04:21:45 pm
-
I shot this image with my 1Ds and 17-40/4L @ 17mm. Do you think this is an effective use of wide-angle perspective exaggeration, or a gimmicky waste of time? Comments and constructive criticisms welcome as always.
-
Jonathan......... I like the shot a lot. It's beautiful and graphic. It doesn't strike me as a gimmick.
I am interested in unusual tree photography. I think trees are a never ending source of a beautiful subject. I have a fine art series called"Nocturnal Botanica". It's trees and plants shot at night under available light: http://www.bernardwolf.com/nocturnalbotanica.html (http://www.bernardwolf.com/nocturnalbotanica.html)
I like your shot a lot. My personal opinion.
-
I love your image! I love the look of live oaks, and have sometimes tried to photograph them to get the wild, knarled look across, though with much less success than you have. I don't see anything gimmicky here at all.
Lisa
-
I agree. I love the abstract movement of the branches interweaving with each other. The building on the right side I could do without but it does provide a sense of perspective and scale. No gimmicks to my eye.
Mike.
-
The perspective and wide angle treatment are great.
As wolfnowl said, though, you could lose the house... I think the fence provides sufficient scale.
-
Beautiful!! Thats an old tree!
Jerry
-
Thanks for the compliments, everyone. The tree trunk is about 8-10 feet in diameter. I found it while driving from San Antonio to Corpus Christi, Texas. There was this abandoned RV park I stopped to shoot, and the property owner stopped by and gave me permission to shoot not only in the RV park (I had been shooting from the road), but a family cemetery behind the park with graves dating back to 1799, and also his front yard and this tree. That spur-of-the-moment stop ended up being the best shooting of the whole trip.
-
The way the tree crawls all over the frame and towards the viewer makes this a compelling pic in my eyes. The building is not the best of backdrops perhaps (but this was already mentioned above), but the tree keeps enough weight to play the main role here.
I wonder if you did some blending or flash to get the branches all in similar detail? Perhaps some darker accents in the branch could help the main "flow" of the tree even more? Not knowing the scene, this can very well be a dumb comment. Forgive me if it is.
-
Jonathan,
I like the image. I agree that the building is not necessary, but there may not be a way to not feature it so it may have to stay.
My suggestion is to work on the tonality of the branches so that the details in the bark becomes more prominent, thereby shifting attention towards the tree and less towards the building. There is a wealth of tones in the tree that are barely visible currently and which would make the image much richer if brought out. Tonality control is one of the most important aspects of a fine image after composition. You got the composition to be impressive. Tone control is the next step.
ALain
-
I shot the tree from several angles, and the house is definitely a necessary evil. I've worked up another frame in the series and cropped it a bit wider, which unfortunately reveals a bit more of the house, but also brings out some interesting branch structures that don't really show up in the first version. In accordance with Alain's advice, I lightened up the branches a bit to bring out their texture. I'm working on my laptop right now, so tonality is a bit difficult to judge properly.
-
Jonathan:
I like the darker one. The gradient in the branches (in the original) make it more dimensional... and the tree more imposing. Just my 2 cents.
-
Jonathan......... I like the shot a lot. It's beautiful and graphic. It doesn't strike me as a gimmick.
I am interested in unusual tree photography. I think trees are a never ending source of a beautiful subject. I have a fine art series called"Nocturnal Botanica". It's trees and plants shot at night under available light: http://www.bernardwolf.com/nocturnalbotanica.html (http://www.bernardwolf.com/nocturnalbotanica.html)
I like your shot a lot. My personal opinion.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=86087\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Good for you both.. best part of the day was seeing your images.
-
Jonathan, I like the tree a lot. Both versions, dark and light.
The house doesn't bother me, it gives the tree a sense of scale. What I would like to see is a straightening of the horizontal line (the fence) and the vertical line (the trunk of the tree) possibly together with the vertical lines of the building - if the latter is not possible then maybe straighten the trunk at the expense of the house - which could be either darker, lighter or a little blurred - which ever would move the house more into the background in order to reveal the lines a bit less.
Angela
-
I shot this image with my 1Ds and 17-40/4L @ 17mm. Do you think this is an effective use of wide-angle perspective exaggeration, or a gimmicky waste of time? Comments and constructive criticisms welcome as always.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=86078\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Not gimmicky at all - a nice original w-a shot. It would be fine art if that distracting ranch-style modular home wasn't there. Can you PS it out?
-
I'd stick with the darker version. The mood fits the subject better.
And I don't mind the house either. It gives scale and context, and otherwise just melts unobtrusively into the background.
LIsa
-
I wonder if you did some blending or flash to get the branches all in similar detail? Perhaps some darker accents in the branch could help the main "flow" of the tree even more? Not knowing the scene, this can very well be a dumb comment. Forgive me if it is.
I didn't use flash; lighting the tree evenly would have required multiple strobes and all I had with me was a 550EX. The tree branches in both versions already go all the way to the bottom of the tonal scale, so going darker isn't really an option.
I've been playing with the image some more; I decided to split the difference tonality-wise and go a bit darker, and did some more fiddling to bring out a bit more detail in the sky.
-
What I would like to see is a straightening of the horizontal line (the fence) and the vertical line (the trunk of the tree) possibly together with the vertical lines of the building - if the latter is not possible then maybe straighten the trunk at the expense of the house - which could be either darker, lighter or a little blurred - which ever would move the house more into the background in order to reveal the lines a bit less.
The horizon in this shot is actually level; the fence angles away from the camera as it goes to the right of the frame. Straightening the trunk would increase the angle of the fence, and vice versa.
-
I didn't use flash; lighting the tree evenly would have required multiple strobes and all I had with me was a 550EX. The tree branches in both versions already go all the way to the bottom of the tonal scale, so going darker isn't really an option.
I've been playing with the image some more; I decided to split the difference tonality-wise and go a bit darker, and did some more fiddling to bring out a bit more detail in the sky.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=86355\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Jonathan,
Very nice. I like your second version the best. The third one shows less detail/texture in the uppermost branches than the second one. We already have drama from the composition, so in my view tone control should be about bringing information about details and tone separation rather than adding more drama.
Alain
-
Since the upper branches were quite a bit darker than the rest, I did some more tweaking and lightened then up a bit to kind of match the rest of the tree, but left the rest of the image alone. Here's version #4:
-
Jonathan,
I'll vote for version 4. Nice tree!
But I'd still like to see you clone out the house and replace it with a mirror image of the fence.
Eric
-
But I'd still like to see you clone out the house and replace it with a mirror image of the fence.
I think that might be just a tad bit obvious...
-
Since the upper branches were quite a bit darker than the rest, I did some more tweaking and lightened then up a bit to kind of match the rest of the tree, but left the rest of the image alone. Here's version #4:
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=86421\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Hi Jonathan,
I like the upper branches in version # 4 the best but I like the trunk of the tree from #2 the best. The lighter trunk from #2 matches the house better and brings unity to the image.
It's all a matter of balance. You see why it can take days or weeks or longer to optimize an image :-)
Alain
-
Yes. The hard part is telling when to quit beating the horse and start applying the lipstick to the next pig...
I appreciate the feedback and have found it useful. Thank you.
-
Yes. The hard part is telling when to quit beating the horse and start applying the lipstick to the next pig...
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=86942\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I consider my RAW images to be just raw material upon which to work. Sometimes the concept is there but things just don't quite gel, the effect is not quite right and one knows it even though others may praise the work. In my case, it's possibly just a matter of not having enough skill in Photoshop to get the effect I want.
Someone made the point recently on the forum that light and shade is more important than the subject. Whatever one's views on this, there's no doubt that the interplay of light and shade, contrast and detail, is crucial to the success of many images.
Alain's recent essay, 'The Eye and the Camera' has some good examples of straight RAW conversions transformed from rather dull and flat images into vibrant images. It is the skill to do this that I personally feel I need to develop, hence my interest in and use of (the no longer available) RawShooter which seemed to be able to add zap, vibrancy and detail to an image in a way that seemed more difficult to achieve with ACR and PS.
I would hesitate to comment on your image viewed on an internet cafe monitor, but it sure looks an impressive tree, enhanced by the use of a wide-angle lens, with an almost semi-abstract quality of shape and form.
-
Very nice Jonathan. All live oaks are photographs waiting to happen. ;-)
Glad to know you're safely home, if only for a while. Just on leave, or home for good?
Nill
~~
www.toulme.net (http://www.toulme.net)
-
I'm back in Germany for the next year or so.
-
I like the 1st darkest version. For some reason when the fore branches are lightened my eye is easily distracted. In the dark pic, I find myself just floating all around the image taking it in.
That is one gnarly tree! Nice work!
-
-
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=89897\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Nice job. I like the abstract and the toning.
-
I definitely like the toning. How did you do it?
I'm a bit conflicted about the crop. It gets rid of the house, but the house gives a bit of perspective to the size of the tree. It also breaks up the backward D-shaped loop of large branches that goes from upper right to lower left and back, which I like.
-
I had no trouble seeing the tree is huge, even without the house. The house does add some size perspective, but the wide angle lens makes the tree look very large compared to the house anyway. In the cropped version, it is still easy for me to tell the tree is large. Maybe it is just knowing that gnarly oaks are also big oaks.
-
I definitely like the toning. How did you do it?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=90086\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
PS > mode > rgb > color bal > yellow lots , red lots > hue/sat > dial down sat
There is lots of selective curves tinkering too..
Did you see your townsacape ?
SMM
-
Yes, I did; you darkened the entire image a bit, which I'm not sure I like, but aside from taht I liked the toning job there as well.