Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Snow Guy on April 18, 2008, 04:22:25 pm
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Hi, this is my first time here and I am interested about photo critques. I am somewhat new at this.
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Hi There, and welcome to the list!
These are certainly panoramas of mountains... what is it your images are trying to say?
Mike.
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I think the topic of the pictures are saying how vast the mountains are.
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Hi, this is my first time here and I am interested about photo critques. I am somewhat new at this.
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Technically good images that are lacking something compositionally. The image on the left—Mt. Baker?—is nicely exposed and looks sharp, but I find myself really wanting to see what's going on in the foreground just below the image. It's frustrating, like looking out a window that's just a little too high.
The right hand image shows some pleasant snow and trees, but there's no compositional organization to it; really just a panoramic snapshot.
Panoramic images have their own internal logic and æsthetic. They have the potential to show what it really feels like to stand in a certain place at a certain time and look out at the world. But to achieve this they generally need some kind of foreground detail to anchor the image and provide a sense of depth. It also helps to think through how much "stuff" to include at each end, to make a visually satisfying arrangement. At least that's been the case with panoramics I've tried.
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The first one was Mt Rainier. I tried to crop it a little but had to end up makeing less long tell me if it improved.
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The first one was Mt Rainier. I tried to crop it a little but had to end up makeing less long tell me if it improved.
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It's a technically competent image. But it doesn't really convey what it feels like to be looking out at this awesome mountain; instead it looks like a painted movie backdrop, because of the lack of depth cues in the foreground. Undoing the cropping doesn't change this very much; everything going on in the image is obviously a long distance away.
Of course, this is just me talking; I have no special artistic training or expertise. But for my own panos, I have found that they consistently have far more presence and impact when there's some detail in the foreground (like a gnarled photogenic tree or some flowers) to provide a visual indication of three-dimensional depth.
Like so: