Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Bruce Cox on October 22, 2010, 09:50:56 am
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The attached is recent enough to still look good to me. Bruce Cox
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Thanks for your comments. I regret I do not understand posting or linking images here. I will look for instructions. Bruce
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The attached is recent enough to still look good to me. Bruce Cox
I feel that the eye is not lead anywhere...
I think that deeper blacks would give it more impact (as viewed on my (profiled) Eizo).
One of my theories is that, when you start thinking that your work looks good, you stop improving. ...I can't remember when I last took a picture I liked for more than a week.
Some of the "great master" painters did similar "double aspect" pictures, but I never liked them.
In the left half of the picture the eye is led to the chair, which leads the eye nowhere... if the chair had not been partly obscured by the trunk, it might have linked the two sides of the picture.
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Thanks for your comments. I regret I do not understand posting or linking images here. I will look for instructions. Bruce
On Snow leopard/Firefox I get a "The file 109.jpg could not be opened because it is empty" message.
Clicking on the picture just produces an address.
As the picture appears, it would seem that you have posted it correctly.
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Some deeper blacks would be good, though my busy compositions tend to make me shy of contrast. The attached is an earlier version with a little more black and elbow room; maybe the chair stuck to the tree will be a little less of a problem. This version has other problems, which if I was at my own machine I would try to improve, but this is what I have here. Bruce
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I may have been too eager to hype my photo with high rez [though it was less than 2 megs] and that was why it didn't attach. My pbase files are generally 1080 lines high. Bruce
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What was it about this scene that inspired you to photograph it?
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The radial aches of oaks and grape articulate the volume complexly, close the point of contradiction. The plane is defined by the transparently fighting pattern of light and shade, versus the pattern of trampled or grassy ground. Bruce
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Bruce, To put what Pop just said a slightly different way: what's the point of this picture? Or, with reference to your original post, what is there about it that "looks good to you?" I'm sure there was a reason why you shot it, and I'm sure there's a reason why you like it, but to me it looks like a random shot of some woods with a couple chairs and a lamp post or something similar on the right, supported by a brace and a cable.
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I'm not making it work if it looks random. The advancing oak seemed a challenge and an opportunity. It might be both frontally present and a three dimensional link to the other standing figures. Rather than one point, ordering the circling elements with competing systems, such as flat pattern versus 3D, interests me. Maybe if I push the cyan slider down farther in B&W conversion the chair will come unstuck from the tree and let the ground recede more easily. Though it may take a lot more than that and I may take another picture some day. Bruce
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I'm not making it work if it looks random. The advancing oak seemed a challenge and an opportunity. It might be both frontally present and a three dimensional link to the other standing figures. Rather than one point, ordering the circling elements with competing systems, such as flat pattern versus 3D, interests me. Maybe if I push the cyan slider down farther in B&W conversion the chair will come unstuck from the tree and let the ground recede more easily. Though it may take a lot more than that and I may take another picture some day. Bruce
That's an impressive and complicated explanation. It might have been a better photograph had there not been as many disparate elements that don't serve the overall composition--like the chair, for example. Also, the scene was backlit, and the oak in the foreground was too large for a backlit object in that shot. You were forced to expose for the background, leaving the oak a big dark mass with little detail. In these situations I think it's best to pare down your vision and simplify the shot by including only those things which would comprise a compelling image. And be mindful of the light and how it's continually changing. You have too much in there that doesn't need to be there and the light was working against you.
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That's an impressive and complicated explanation. It might have been a better photograph had there not been as many disparate elements that don't serve the overall composition--like the chair, for example. Also, the scene was backlit, and the oak in the foreground was too large for a backlit object in that shot. You were forced to expose for the background, leaving the oak a big dark mass with little detail. In these situations I think it's best to pare down your vision and simplify the shot by including only those things which would comprise a compelling image. And be mindful of the light and how it's continually changing. You have too much in there that doesn't need to be there and the light was working against you.
I agree that I haven't been able to make the trees in north light vivid enough. Thanks. Bruce
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Bruce, If the "advancing oak" is the subject of the picture why not concentrate on the advancing oak? As it is there's no focus point. It's just a rather cluttered piece of woodland. Seems to me that since the oak actually has character, your job is to illustrate and make clear to all of us the character of the oak.
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Bruce, If the "advancing oak" is the subject of the picture why not concentrate on the advancing oak? As it is there's no focus point. It's just a rather cluttered piece of woodland. Seems to me that since the oak actually has character, your job is to illustrate and make clear to all of us the character of the oak.
It might have been a good idea, but I did not intend the advancing oak to be the subject. Rather, it was to be a partly open door to the "rather cluttered piece of woodland" in which I was trying to display layers of order. I'll keep trying. Bruce
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Enlightened by our discussion I have increased the contrast by, among other things, skewing the color balances before converting to B&W. I have increase the open ground as a percentage of the picture, mainly by cropping the top, so that the players will have more stage in common. Bruce
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Bruce, Sorry but it's still just a rather cluttered piece of woodland, but with more contrast, and, as a result, less mid-tone detail in the area of zones 2, 3, and 4. I don't understand where the "layers of order" are. Who are the "players," what is the "stage," and what are the players playing? Do you see a focal point in this picture? If so, where is it?
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Bruce, Sorry but it's still just a rather cluttered piece of woodland, but with more contrast, and, as a result, less mid-tone detail in the area of zones 2, 3, and 4. I don't understand where the "layers of order" are. Who are the "players," what is the "stage," and what are the players playing? Do you see a focal point in this picture? If so, where is it?
The layers of order are in the mind of the beholder. The players are the trees, posts, and other discernible objects. The well defined, if not completely even, plane of the ground is the stage. There is no focal point. What would you do with one if you had if? Bruce
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Well, that certainly clears things up.
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The layers of order are in the mind of the beholder. The players are the trees, posts, and other discernible objects. The well defined, if not completely even, plane of the ground is the stage. There is no focal point. What would you do with one if you had if? Bruce
I'd run it up the flagpole and see if Russ salutes it. ;D
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I'd run it up the flagpole and see if Russ salutes it. ;D
I didn't see any flagpole. I shall readjust my monitor.
Rob C
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I'm beginning to think maybe the joke's on us, especially after that most recent "explanation."
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I'm beginning to think maybe the joke's on us, especially after that most recent "explanation."
Or perhaps Bruce is a writer for Aperture magazine.
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Or perhaps Bruce is a writer for Aperture magazine.
Would the post not then have been on the 'Anas' thread?
Rob C
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Or perhaps Bruce is a writer for Aperture magazine.
Eric, That may be it. My subscription to Aperture just ran out this year. All I can say now is "good riddance." What happened to "Aperture" is the same thing that happened to "Poetry" magazine years ago. In both cases it's a tragedy.
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The layers of order are in the mind of the beholder. The players are the trees, posts, and other discernible objects. The well defined, if not completely even, plane of the ground is the stage. There is no focal point. What would you do with one if you had if? Bruce
If that kind of explanation is necessary to appreciate what you are trying to accomplish with the shot (and I for one certainly don't understand even after the explanation), then there's something wrong with the photograph.
Or with me.
Jeremy
Incidentally, you write of skewing the colour balance before conversion to b&w. I don't know what tool you are using for the conversion but there are several which allow you to convert to b&w and to fiddle with the contribution made by various colours afterwards, watching the image as you do. It might be easier.
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If that kind of explanation is necessary to appreciate what you are trying to accomplish with the shot (and I for one certainly don't understand even after the explanation), then there's something wrong with the photograph.
Or with me.
Jeremy
Incidentally, you write of skewing the colour balance before conversion to b&w. I don't know what tool you are using for the conversion but there are several which allow you to convert to b&w and to fiddle with the contribution made by various colours afterwards, watching the image as you do. It might be easier.
I apologize for answering rhetorical questions. I had customized the six sliders in CW4's B&W converter to make the earlier picture, where the oaks were, as popnfresh said, "a big dark mass with little detail" because of the back-lighting. In hope of being able to do better and take advantage of the blueish lichen on the surface of the bark, I uncolor-balanced the file with the three siders of Color Balance under Image, Adjustments, in each of the three levels [shadow, midtones, and highlights] with Preserve Luminosity unchecked. I then used the B&W converter sliders. Though this seemed to help, there is likely a better way to do it. Bruce
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Is anyone still taking this with a straight face?
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Is anyone still taking this with a straight face?
I think it's a good bet that Mr. Cox is. http://www.pbase.com/brucecox
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Pop, I'm afraid you're right.
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Bruce, keep shooting. The more you shoot the better photographer you'll be.