Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: seamus finn on May 10, 2011, 08:16:11 am
-
This is at a place called Gleniffe Horseshoe in the mountains near Sligo, Ireland.
-
Seamus, Splendid! This is what "landscape" should be: a background for people, their activities, and their artifacts. The greatest landscape painters knew this, but many landscape photographers never knew or have forgotten that this is what gives great landscape images their power.
-
Wonderful! Any chance in the capture image of recovering highlights in the Border Collie whites and sheep backs? Hope you get a chance to look at the Brooks Jensen editorial in the May/June issue of LensWork...I think you would understand what he is trying to say....
-
I made a conscious effort to do exactly that, Patricia, and it looks ok here, but maybe it doesn't travel well.
Just read the LensWork editorial - Brooks Jensen gets right to the heart of the matter. Also, it explains, I think, what Russ is on about when he talks (above) about 'a background for people, their activities and their artifacts'.
-
Yes, environment...and breath...
-
Very good pic Seamus. Nice range of tones and the comp is great. This picture really tells a story, i luv it. Heinz
-
Seamus
You know I like your work, and I love Ireland too. And Sligo is wonderful. So this is right up my street - more please.
John
-
I find little to fault with the composition. Technically, the blown high values on the sheep, and to a lesser extent on the dogs, bother me. But I guess you know that.
-
Love it -- I have fond memories of stopping for "sheep jams" on our honeymoon in Ireland 26 years ago.
-
Technically, the blown high values on the sheep, and to a lesser extent on the dogs, bother me. But I guess you know that.
Yep, it's a known known.
-
Terrific image, Seamus!
Eric
-
Really great capture and pp work. :)
-
Popnfresh, being a bit bothered by the blown values in the sheep, I went back to the scene of the crime this morning and came up with this:
-
I find little to fault with the composition. Technically, the blown high values on the sheep, and to a lesser extent on the dogs, bother me. But I guess you know that.
Personally I feel in a B&W image small areas of blown out areas don't bother me. In fact they sometimes add something to an image. In this case the original is the better. More contrast adds to the bleakness. This is a case of the original poster "giving in" to the members instead of sticking to his guns. 8)
-
It's not so much a case of giving in as seeing if it can be done, Stamper. On a quality site like this when a technical issue is introduced, I always feel the need to go back and address it - just as a challenge. I have too much respect for the members who regularly feature here to ignore what they have to say. Incidentally, I prefer the first one too - the gritty bleakness is what it's all about, as you rightly point out. However, there definitely is a technical issue about the blown out values and in that sense, it's a valid criticism.
-
Imo 99% of images have technical problems. However it is only a problem if they detract from an image. Ironically there is another on going thread about judges judging images. They are guilty of nitpicking small problems. They don't do it for the sake of it. They do it so that they can differentiate between images so that to put them into a pecking order in order to choose a winner, second and third. No image can be perfect. A lot of the best have obvious faults. I assumed in your first image you had deliberately posted the image with overblown highlights to emphasis the contrast. :)
-
Correct, Stamper - although I did give the blown out values a little attention before posting the original. However, like many people, I am often not the best judge of my own work.
-
I have fond memories of stopping for "sheep jams" on our honeymoon in Ireland 26 years ago.
Here's a reminder, Ken, same place, different day.
-
It's not so much a case of giving in as seeing if it can be done, Stamper. On a quality site like this when a technical issue is introduced, I always feel the need to go back and address it - just as a challenge. I have too much respect for the members who regularly feature here to ignore what they have to say. Incidentally, I prefer the first one too - the gritty bleakness is what it's all about, as you rightly point out. However, there definitely is a technical issue about the blown out values and in that sense, it's a valid criticism.
There could be a middle ground here. I also prefer the contrastier version, just not the blown highlights. You should be able to play with the levels and curves so that increasing the midtone contrast doesn't blow out the sheep so much. I'd also experiment with B&W filters in Photoshop. It's such a nice image I'd play with it some more. Out of curiosity, what did you shoot this with?
-
Popnfresh, being a bit bothered by the blown values in the sheep, I went back to the scene of the crime this morning and came up with this:
Seamus, Definitely yes. The tones are much better, but I wonder about the crop. (I guess you just can't win.)
-
Out of curiosity, what did you shoot this with?
Canon 5D, 70-200 L f4 lens, 1.250/f9
-
Here's a reminder, Ken, same place, different day.
Thanks, Seamus!! We are celebrating our anniversary today, and I will share this with my lovely wife when I get home.
-
What a coincidence! Congratulations to you both. And I hope you two come back to Ireland sometime soon.
-
What a coincidence! Congratulations to you both. And I hope you two come back to Ireland sometime soon.
Thanks, we plan to do so. My wife's grandfather grew up outside Clifden, and we visited her great aunt and other relatives while we were there. Great trip.
-
Just chipping in to say I disagree with RSL's original comment here; yes, landscapes can be simply a backdrop for humanity but I much prefer photographing nature's backdrops where man has had less of an impact. Both still landscapes but your statement just jumped out as being a little blinkered.
;)
Seamus, Splendid! This is what "landscape" should be: a background for people, their activities, and their artifacts. The greatest landscape painters knew this, but many landscape photographers never knew or have forgotten that this is what gives great landscape images their power.
-
Just chipping in to say I disagree with RSL's original comment here; yes, landscapes can be simply a backdrop for humanity but I much prefer photographing nature's backdrops where man has had less of an impact. Both still landscapes but your statement just jumped out as being a little blinkered.
;)
Very well put. I agree.
Eric
-
+1
-
Just chipping in to say I disagree with RSL's original comment here; yes, landscapes can be simply a backdrop for humanity but I much prefer photographing nature's backdrops where man has had less of an impact. Both still landscapes but your statement just jumped out as being a little blinkered. ;)
Buggs, Eric, Dmer, You certainly should photograph the things that move you, but that doesn't invalidate what I said. The greatest landscape painters understood that man and his artifacts are the final touch that makes a landscape painting (or photograph) a great landscape painting (or photograph). But that doesn't mean you have to make landscape photographs with man and his artifacts in them.
-
Buggs, Eric, Dmer, You certainly should photograph the things that move you, but that doesn't invalidate what I said. The greatest landscape painters understood that man and his artifacts are the final touch that makes a landscape painting (or photograph) a great landscape painting (or photograph). But that doesn't mean you have to make landscape photographs with man and his artifacts in them.
Russ,
Many, if not most, of my own landscapes include human artifacts, but I don't think that is what makes them any better (or worse) than those that don't.
Perhaps your definition of "The greatest landscape painters" is restricted to those that "understood that man and his artifacts are the final touch that makes a landscape painting (or photograph) a great landscape painting (or photograph)."
Even if it is true (I haven't tried to verify or refute this assertion) that "the greatest landscape painters" often or usually included human artifacts, that doesn't in any way prove that that fact is the sole basis for their greatness. As for photographers, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Paul Caponigro all have landscapes with as well as without human artifacts in them, and the best ones that come to mind (in my opinion) are very often the ones without human artifacts (Weston's final images on Point Lobos, for example).
But, of course, you are entitled to your opinion, too, however misguided it may be. ;)
Cheers,
Eric
P.S. It's true that I can't think of any good Cartier-Bresson landscapes that don't contain human artifacts.
-
...Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Paul Caponigro all have landscapes ... without human artifacts in them...
Eric, Exactly, which is why so many of Ansel's, Edward's and Paul's landscapes are extended yawns. To see what I'm talking about check Constable and Turner for starters. I'd also add Thomas Cole on the American side. That's just for starters. If you'd like a more complete list, as soon as I have time to dig into my stuff I'll try to produce one for you. Unfortunately our more modern painters have transitioned from painting to dripping and spattering, which gives photographers a leg up.
-
Eric, Exactly, which is why so many of Ansel's, Edward's and Paul's landscapes are extended yawns.
Perhaps for you, but not at all for me.
Constable and Turner have some nice stuff but nothing that moves me as much as a good Weston. Your mileage quite obviously differs (you drive a Hummer? ;) )
Eric
-
Eric, You're right, it's a personal thing, and I'm obviously overstating the case to make a point. In the late fifties and early sixties I doted on Ansel and Edward. Both were very good photographers and, in those days at least, Edward's sex life, especially, was very dotable, especially when it came to shots of Tina stretched out nude in the sun.
But you have to remember that those two guys were doing landscapes at the dawn of photography as a serious art form. They were originals, and most of their descendents are copying what they did. Every once in a while I see a photographic landscape that's original work, but very, very, very rarely. Most current landscapes are tedious at best, and virtually all the landscapes I see on LuLa fall into that category.
What Edward, and especially Ansel were doing was studio work, and the darkroom was their studio. Oh, yes, they made their careful, tedious, f/64 exposures outdoors, but most of the real work was done in the darkroom. In Brooks Jensen's Letting Go of the Camera there's an article titled "Project Work vs. Greatest Hits." In it, Brooks points out: "Most people aren't aware that a straight print of Moonrise Over Hernandez is almost unrecognizable compared to the finished print we've all seen published and reproduced so often. In the original, unmanipulated print, the sky is almost jet white and the moon is a perfect Zone X white disc in the middle of this almost-white sky. In the final print, this almost-white sky is printed to almost jet black and the moon becomes a detailed glow." In other words, as Ansel put it: "The negative is the score. The print is the performance." Or, to put it a different way, Ansel's, and to a lesser extent, Edward's real art was post-processing.
Somewhere in the early sixties I stumbled on HCB and my whole attitude changed. Yes, natural beauty is worth recording, but no photograph can even begin to approximate the natural beauty I see every day when I step outside my door. I keep coming back to what Brooks said in this month's LensWork: that a photographer's real job is to say, "look at this," and say it in a way that illuminates what the casual observer usually misses. To me that means a story: street photography to say "look at this" about something telling in people's behavior or attitude or interrelationships, or the ghosts of the departed left behind in abandoned structures and implements. None of this rules out landscape, but landscape that shows the relationship of people to the land is what makes a great landscape, as Turner, Constable, and Cole, and I suspect even Ansel and Edward all knew.
What's Ansel's most famous photograph? Clearly it's "Moonrise Over Hernandez." What's "Moonrise Over Hernandez" about? It's about the relationship of the little town of Hernandez to its surroundings.
I rest my case.