Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Jeremy Roussak on October 27, 2012, 09:42:57 am
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Comments? It was a disappointing morning, generally.
Jeremy
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I like the subtlety of it Jeremy. It really needs to be a large print on a wall.
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Very nice Jeremy. IMO this is what it looks like to be there and it speaks to me so much more than the typical over-saturated presentation. :)
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Fine capture, Jeremy.
I am a bit concerned with the area in the upper right corner (encircled in the attached file): there seems to be a transition from kind of muddy area to a brightly lit one, which does not appear natural. If those are crepuscular rays, they are not congruent with the implied sun position, judging by the direction of shadows.
Also, the lower third appears to be of less interest compositionally, weighing down the rest of the image. I cropped a bit of the bottom to redirect the attention toward the area with lights and shadows interplay.
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I don't often disagree with Slobodan about landscape, but this time I do disagree. The "muddy area" clearly is a shaft of crepuscular rays but I don't see a problem with the direction of the shadows. The sun is above the upper left of the picture, at about ten-o-clock from the direction of sight, and all the bright areas and shadows correspond with the direction of the sun. Finally, the cropped part of the picture contains some of the most subtle and beautiful color contrasts and correspondences in the whole thing. I think the crop greatly reduces the picture (as most crops tend to do).
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Fine capture, Jeremy.
I am a bit concerned with the area in the upper right corner (encircled in the attached file): there seems to be a transition from kind of muddy area to a brightly lit one, which does not appear natural. If those are crepuscular rays, they are not congruent with the implied sun position, judging by the direction of shadows.
Also, the lower third appears to be of less interest compositionally, weighing down the rest of the image. I cropped a bit of the bottom to redirect the attention toward the area with lights and shadows interplay.
I trust that if kikashi or his camera were trying to fool us they would have chosen a more prominent peak to highlight [meaning no offense to kikashi's subtle ways]. The dead weight of the foreground is ballast, context, and counterpoint to the unusual light up top. I'm glad you questioned it though - I enjoy it more now for having looked longer. The photograph seems to me be more about time than space.
Bruce
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Comments? It was a disappointing morning, generally.
Jeremy
IMO it's mother nature's lighting that has let you down here Jeremy.
however I also feel you made the mistake we all make and that is to get too much in.
And I would also guess you have taken the same photo thousands of others have done of this scene and for your photo to be stunning you need mother nature to turn on the right lights.
IMO a better approach by you would be to seek out subjects/scenes others fail to see. Most who go there would take a wide lens or as we have these days UWA lens 'to get it all in". I would suggest the longer lens maybe better as I can see so many wonderful shapes and colours within your photo that would make wonderful photos on their own.
This is not directed solely at you Jeremy.
I read an online article recently about two photographers, one had the gear while the other had the experience. They were together at the same scenic area. The gear bloke rushed madly around photographing any and everything he saw. He changed lenses back and forth while he blasted off 40-50 files. The experience bloke walk off without his gear, he stopped to look and listen, he walk a little more to stop, sit, look and listen. Then he returned to the car to get his camera and the right lens and walked back to the spot he had chosen for his photo. He only needed one photo to record the scene as he saw it. The author of the article was the inexperience bloke and he admitted none of his photos came close to the one photo the experiences bloke took and all this happened many years earlier.
So what's it all about? Slow down, look and study the scene or scenes in front and around you. See the shadows and highlights. See the distractions. See the scene framed on your wall. Now look inside the scene for the unseen. If possible, walk into the scene and look around you and you maybe surprised at what you see. Learn to stop, look and study the subject.
Digital photography has made it too easy to blaze away hoping we "get the photo" Yes; I'm guilty of it also. It's fine to take lots and lots of photos but all those photos have to be sorted, file, deleted and edited. A bad photo is better than no photo, but one great photo is worth a 100 reasonable photos IMO.
BTW: a "bloke" is Australian slang for a man lol
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It's a good story, Ian, and it's right on all points. But I don't think it applies to Jeremy's photograph, and I don't understand why Jeremy thinks his photograph is "disappointing."
First of all, to really look at the picture you need to bring it to full screen, with a black border. Just looking at it with the distraction of the LuLa page behind it doesn't get the job done; too much of the foreground gets lost because the brightness of the rest of the page tends to pull your eye away. (For the same reason, I'd frame it with a fairly wide black mat.)
Now, check the background. The very bright cliff at center left is nicely balanced by the very bright cliffs being hit by the crepuscular rays Slobodan picked out on the far right. And linear perspective gives us a sight line between the two very bright areas. Because of the differential lighting both of these very bright areas, plus the lighted area in the center and the cliffs behind give us some interesting diagonals. But the diagonals are held in place by the flat tops of the buttes near a broken overcast sky.
The details in the bright areas are what grab us at first, but if you keep looking and pull your eyes down to the foreground you find an array of interesting shapes in subdued colors: reds that are complementary to some bluish greens.
It's a subtle picture. It doesn't knock your eye out. Nowadays we're used to things that knock our eyes out and so it's hard for us to deal with a picture like this that invites not a visceral response, but contemplation. If you slow down and study it you'll see that it's a very fine landscape, not at all what the average tourist would shoot.
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I would focus only on the best looking part of the photo.
I see the tendency in my images, to shoot more than neccessary only to later find out that I should have taken the telephoto lens right away. Or that I see something nice, but cannot accept it is good as it is, and then start to experiment somehow and end up watering it down, where instead just should have put it in the center of attention.
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As usual the crop ruins the picture. The crop takes away the bright area at the far right which balances the very bright bluff at the left, and by eliminating the subtle tones in what was the foreground moves the horizon to the middle of the frame, over-emphasizing the sky, a sky that's pleasant but not that interesting. It's a completely different picture: a cliché any tourist would rush to shoot.
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Interesting comments, as usual!
Slobodan, I'm not sure why the rays you point out make you feel that something's wrong; they're just crepuscular rays. I've done nothing very much to the photograph, which is a four-shot panorama, apart from the stitch (obviously) and some fiddling with the global sliders in LR afterwards. There were quite a few such rays about that morning, as you can see from this shot, which I took about half an hour later.
Russ, it was the morning that disappointed, not this particular shot (which goes some way to redeeming things, I think). I'd planned it badly. I overslept by half an hour, then drove to Point Imperial. It was below freezing and I didn't have enough clothes with me. I found Point Imperial rather uninspiring, so I drove for 30 minutes to Cape Royal, where I spent about 45 minutes before the sky became completely overcast. I was cross with myself for not having gone straight to Cape Royal, which I think gives a superb view of the Grand Canyon, very different from anywhere I've seen on the south rim.
cmi, I'm with Russ (and Bruce) on the crop: I think you have removed parts of the shot which balance it and give it structure. I took one or two longer-lens / non-panoramic shots, and they're not without interest, but this panorama seems to me to convey the breadth of the view. I'll post one or two of the others later.
Ian, good points. "bloke" is very much English as well!
Jeremy
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I don't see anything wrong with the original image. ???
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For me, the original, boring fg, image as a whole too chaotic.
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Not to argue with anyone, but I am still puzzled by the direction of the crepuscular rays. It differs significantly from the direction of ground shadows. I connected tips of buttes with tips of their shadows to determine the angle of sun. It would be nice if someone with a better knowledge of the subject than me would explain the difference.
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). I'd planned it badly. I overslept by half an hour, freezing and I didn't have enough clothes with me.
LOL now that lets mother nature off the hook!! ;D
IMO many of the great (landscape) photos happened because the photographer was at the right place at right time, however it's a great photographer that knows when to be at the right place at the right time and that all comes down knowing the subject and to planning
BTW: if the tourist go there I generally stay away and look for something different.
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Slobodan, I'm just guessing, and it would be nice if somebody who's really into the physics of it would come up with something definitive, but since it's a four shot pano, the change in the direction of sight for the first and last shot may explain the difference in angle. In any case, the difference isn't striking enough to catch the eye of anybody who's not a dedicated landscape photographer.
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Slobodan,
i think those rays that are troubling you start over the photographer's head and out of the frame such that the image only partially captures them making appear that they are coming from a different angle.
Frank
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Not to argue with anyone, but I am still puzzled by the direction of the crepuscular rays. It differs significantly from the direction of ground shadows. I connected tips of buttes with tips of their shadows to determine the angle of sun. It would be nice if someone with a better knowledge of the subject than me would explain the difference.
OK, Slobodan, I understand now. I can't explain it, though. Here are the four shots which made up the pano, untouched. Any ideas?
Jeremy
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Crepuscular rays really are parallel rays. convergence is a result of perspective. Perspective on such a scale that the human mind doesn't connect it to viewing depth. Usually they converge towards the sun since that is an element in the image. In this case the sun is not in the image and convergence happens in the opposite direction.
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It looks to me that the shot #4 is a bit lighter and more contrasty in the overlap areas than #3. Also, I do not notice the rays in #3's overlap area (though it is possible they appeared just as you moved the camera between shots). Increasing contrast in further post-processing probably amplified the effect of the "crepuscular" rays. I am using quotation marks as I am not certain anymore they are really so.
Was there a polarizer used, or any other type of filter, even UV? Lens hood? It is possible that the lighter sky area in #4 is a filter-induced flare.
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... Perspective on such a scale that the human mind doesn't connect it to viewing depth. Usually they converge towards the sun since that is an element in the image. In this case the sun is not in the image and convergence happens in the opposite direction.
Huh?
EDIT: Apparently, there is such a thing as anti-crepuscular rays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticrepuscular_rays) (seen opposite the sun in the sky). Good to learn something new.
However, another site (http://www.atoptics.co.uk/atoptics/anti1.htm) claims "you must have your back to the sun or sunset point to see them."
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not enough images have been taken to make the panorama IMO. With a subject like this I would take up to 15-20 frames so i have heavy overlapping. And shock horrors, i use AV and usually hand held.....yep too lazy to get the tripod out :-[ . And I make sure I leave plenty of space at the top and bottom.
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I scratch my head when people get going on technicalities. They do it all the time on fora like Nikonians. Over there they're a lot more interested in equipment and technique than they are in photographs. In this case I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Either the picture's good or it's not. As it happens, the picture is good, whether or not the "rays" are crepuscular (actually meaning "dim, like twilight") and whether or not they appear to line up with the exact angle of the sun.
Seems to me crepuscular rays are an illusion anyway. Under certain atmospheric conditions they appear to branch out from the sun, but the sun is far enough away that in a practical sense sunlight is collimated, meaning rays of sunlight can't really branch out unless something interferes with them. So the idea that crepuscular rays have to follow the path of direct sunlight doesn't hold up.
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not enough images have been taken to make the panorama IMO. With a subject like this I would take up to 15-20 frames so i have heavy overlapping. And shock horrors, i use AV and usually hand held.....yep too lazy to get the tripod out :-[ . And I make sure I leave plenty of space at the top and bottom.
So explain, please, how more overlap would have led to a "better" panorama. 20% overlap is, as far as I can tell, plenty; and I suspect that there's more than that here.
At the same time I was at Cape Royal, a fellow-Englishman was there with about 5 cameras on Gigapan mounts. Maybe he'd meet your criteria.
Jeremy
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It looks to me that the shot #4 is a bit lighter and more contrasty in the overlap areas than #3. Also, I do not notice the rays in #3's overlap area (though it is possible they appeared just as you moved the camera between shots). Increasing contrast in further post-processing probably amplified the effect of the "crepuscular" rays. I am using quotation marks as I am not certain anymore they are really so.
Was there a polarizer used, or any other type of filter, even UV? Lens hood? It is possible that the lighter sky area in #4 is a filter-induced flare.
Yes, it does look a little lighter. The fifth frame, which I didn't use, is lighter still.
No polariser, no; but I keep a Hoya 1A mounted all the time. I had the Canon hood fitted. I rather doubt there was any flare: as my shivering well demonstrated, I (and hence the lens) was in shade the entire time.
Jeremy
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Maybe this helps a bit.
As I see it, Jeremy was facing almost west when he took this shot so the sun was behind him and over his left shoulder. The rays that Slobodan are tracing are projected onto a nearly north-south plane so the perspective is distorted. Here is an image which I was never able to process well but perhaps illustrates the point. In this case we are also facing west but the sun is obviously in front of us. The crepuscular rays that clearly project back to the sun take on a variety of apparent angles when projected onto the image plane.
(http://churly.zenfolio.com/img/s1/v56/p1230391192-4.jpg)
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So explain, please, how more overlap would have led to a "better" panorama. 20% overlap is, as far as I can tell, plenty; and I suspect that there's more than that here.
by overlapping heavily means a smaller part of each image is used and if there is a little variation in exposure it is not as noticeable. As I said i usually hand hold the camera and heavily overlapping means nothing is left out. Works for me most of the time. I feel many make panoramas sound to hard the do. LOL the Lumis 200 does panoramas in camera but annoying only at 27 mm. I wouldn't bother using it.