Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Jeremy Roussak on March 31, 2014, 02:25:29 pm
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Yet Another Sunset. Thoughts welcome, as ever.
Jeremy
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Yags from yagfl.
Cheers
~YaC
Yet another great shot from yet another great fellow Lulist.
Cheers
~Yet another Chris
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As a moonrise photo, it's terrible. But as YAS, it's a nice one.
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Ah yes. . . another YAS. Nice colors, Jeremy. Nice tourist shot.
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Ah yes. . . another YAS. Nice colors, Jeremy. Nice tourist shot.
Russ,
Don't you mean 'yet another YAS'? or maybe 'yet another YAS sunset?' :D
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Ah yes. . . another YAS. Nice colors, Jeremy. Nice tourist shot.
I bet you speak of PIN numbers, Russ.
I'd hoped the layering of the land would help it to rise above just a tourist shot.
Jeremy
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Ah yes. . . another YAS. Nice colors, Jeremy. Nice tourist shot.
Aren't we all tourists?
;-)
Harald
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Lately I've begun to wonder, Harald.
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I probably need to elaborate on that response. I wrote this a couple years ago about street photography but it applies to any photographic genre:
". . .when it comes to posting or displaying your photographs you should be extremely critical, and to be able to be critical in an informed way you need to become familiar with the genre. That calls not only for reading, but for studying the work of the masters. . .
"Again and again I see howlers people post on the web as street photography, and I try not to laugh too hard because I've shot my share of flubs like these too. I'm sure I'm far from the only one who reacts that way. Fact is that even when you get good at street photography you'll shoot bags and bags of bloopers, a smaller number of not too bad shots, and the rare picture you should be willing to show.
"Beyond the rare picture that's showable there's the kind of picture upon which you'd be willing to hang your reputation. If you can average one of those a year you're getting pretty good."
During the past year or so I've seen what appears to me to be an increasing departure on LuLa from serious self-discipline when it comes to culling pictures. We've always had a few people for whom anything that comes out of the camera is worth posting in hopes of a few pats on the back, but that small population seems to be increasing. I think it feeds on itself. Of course if you're not familiar with the genre in which you're trying to work then you have no standards upon which to make decisions about what to post and what not to post. The solution to that problem is to learn about your genre, but that takes study.
Another problem that encourages people to post a certain kind of junk is that critiques seem often to tend more toward technical matters than toward the validity of the picture. (We can start another thread later on the meaning of "validity" as it applies to visual art.) Everybody wants to change the position of the saturation slider or crop a bit here or there or change the tone mapping or etc., etc., etc. I'm guilty of that too as I just demonstrated with Bernard's "Little One." A certain amount of technical criticism certainly is worthwhile, but when criticism focuses on technical details to the exclusion of the validity of the vision being supported by technique it encourages people to post technically excellent garbage just because it's technically excellent.
You can't get somebody who insists on posting even his most tedious tourist pictures to stop doing that, but at least you can stop telling the poster that his picture is really good. Yes, doing that makes him feel good and it makes you feel good about yourself, but it isn't what a critique is supposed to be for.
Remember that once you post a picture you can't really take it back. You're going to be judged on that picture. You may be able to overcome the judgment that goes with a bad one with a bunch of good ones, but the relationship is something like the saying we used to have in the Air Force: "You can go along day after day racking up 'attaboy's, but one 'dumbshit' wipes out all the 'attaboys' and you have to start over."
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Since that diatribe is posted on a thread that I started, I suppose I would be entitled to take it personally, but I don't. I've made my position on critique perfectly clear: if I wanted unalloyed praise, I'd show my photographs to my mother. I post them here in order to take advantage of the expertise, both technical and aesthetic, freely offered by the contributors. I afford some more weight than others, of course, because I can see more evidence of what lies behind their comments. I've learned a lot here over the past few years and I like to think that my photography has improved.
As to this shot, I posted it for the reasons I set out above. It may or may not have succeeded in what I intended it to do, but it wasn't meant to be a picture only (only!?) of a pretty sunset.
Jeremy
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If you want a nit:
One of the edges looks slightly haloy (or is it halowy or haloey???)
Still love this shot.
Its great!
Did I mention I love it?
Great shot !
Cheers
~YaC
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Jeremy, you shouldn't take it personally. I put it here because here is where the subject came up. I probably should have started a separate thread. I happen to think you've been quite selective about what you've posted. Wish I could say the same for everybody posting here.
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Jeremy, you shouldn't take it personally. I put it here because here is where the subject came up. I probably should have started a separate thread. I happen to think you've been quite selective about what you've posted. Wish I could say the same for everybody posting here.
This statement is just arrogant and it's as precise as your term "tourist shot".
Harald
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Ahhhh. . . But precise enough that you know exactly what "tourist shot" means.
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I think the ideal of criticism is to provide an honest assessment of a particular work so that the creator can either modify that work toward a better final piece or use the criticism to inform and improve future work. With that in mind, I think we can look critically at criticism.
Good criticism does not simply seek to tear down a substandard work. It attempts to look at the work without bias, neither praising nor attacking except as might be helpful to the artist. And because criticism is utterly useless if it does not provide enough information to help the artist see beyond their own preconceptions of their work, blunt, terse statements like “tourist shot” cannot be considered criticism.
But criticism is difficult. It's easier to make a sweeping statement that attacks a work than it is to actually think about and articulate what is working and what is not working within an image. Some people find it emotionally satisfying to attack without making the effort to understand and be able to write intelligently about an image.
In this thread, Russ seems to take the postion that he wants a higher level of quality in the images posted to this forum, but he is not willing to supply a higher level of criticism, resorting to nothing more than uninformative put downs. If we want a better quality of work, we must be willing to supply a better quality of criticism.
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Hi Jagatai, and welcome to the forum. Yes, it would be nice always to be able to point to ways to improve a picture somebody posts. But first, the person doing the posting has to learn how to cull his own work so that what he's showing is even capable of serious criticism. Somebody who throws up everything that comes out of his camera is the kind of guy who used to shoot a couple hundred meaningless transparencies on a trip to Niagara Falls and then invite his neighbor, who felt compelled because of friendship, to come over for a long, boring slide show. Sometimes a sweeping statement is exactly what a poster needs. I could cite examples but I'd rather not grind anybody's nose into his incontinence.
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Nice colours in the sky but for me a sunset shot needs more than this. Some recession in the hills but the bottom half without the sky is not great with little to rest the eye on. Sorry to be so negative. Ken
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I probably need to elaborate on that response. I wrote this a couple years ago about street photography but it applies to any photographic genre:
". . .when it comes to posting or displaying your photographs you should be extremely critical, and to be able to be critical in an informed way you need to become familiar with the genre. That calls not only for reading, but for studying the work of the masters. . .
I do not think it's necessary to study the masters, whoever they may be. Because you may be naturally good at something and just because someone came before you, it does not mean they were better.
Though I do agree that culling is a part of photography that is not practiced enough.
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Would this be a NAS?
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I do not think it's necessary to study the masters, whoever they may be. Because you may be naturally good at something and just because someone came before you, it does not mean they were better.
I'd agree it doesn't mean they were better, Jeremy. But they did define photography's genres. If you're a portrait and wedding photographer you have a single, well defined genre to deal with, so the masters don't matter, but if you're interested in photography as an art form they do matter. Studying people like Gene Smith doesn't mean you're going to copy Gene Smith, but you might learn that Gene did a kind of photography that strikes you as worthwhile.
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I'd agree it doesn't mean they were better, Jeremy. But they did define photography's genres. If you're a portrait and wedding photographer you have a single, well defined genre to deal with, so the masters don't matter, but if you're interested in photography as an art form they do matter. Studying people like Gene Smith doesn't mean you're going to copy Gene Smith, but you might learn that Gene did a kind of photography that strikes you as worthwhile.
Artists can define themselves without reference to others. Not to mention, they will also do work that is deliberately different from what has gone before.
Another thing to consider is..... Does seeing other's work you like influence your output or do you like their work because it is similar to what you are going to produce yourself anyway?
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To do work that is deliberately different from what has gone before you first have to know what has gone before.
Bottom line, Jeremy, I think the most important thing about studying others' work is that it helps you understand what's possible.
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I was simply mentioning two options,[there are more]. One was working without looking at possible influences, one was looking at predecessors and in essence rejecting them.
Both valid. Don't forget someone had to be be the first at something as there were no 'masters' before them.
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Exactly, and in most cases they're masters because they established a new way of seeing things.
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Bottom line, Jeremy, I think the most important thing about studying others' work is that it helps you understand what's possible.
Of course it is. Understand what's possible; be given new ideas; think about them; modify them a bit, so they match your vision and not the originators; probably (since they're masters and you're not) harm them, but in any event come up with something new.
Jeremy
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Russ, your earlier comments outline exactly why I post and comment less than I had before. I challenge myself by posting what I think is my best work on here with the hope that I receive more than a "nice shot" photo (if I even get that).
I used to get frustrated when I would come back from a 3 hour hike/photoshoot without a single photo I liked. Now I see it as an opportunity to reflect on why that was the case.
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Jeremy, that's a nice, fiery sunset! So, do not be afraid to make that very point. Sunset haters may burn in there (hehe, not sure if my metaphors are too mixed or working at all). I tried my version, to the right of your OP:
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Welcome back Slobodan.
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Jeremy, that's a nice, fiery sunset! So, do not be afraid to make that very point. Sunset haters may burn in there (hehe, not sure if my metaphors are too mixed or working at all). I tried my version, to the right of your OP:
I like it, Slobodan, but I'm not sure I like it more than mine: it's different, certainly. The purplish tint of the cloud in the centre top of your version looks a bit odd.
I think one thing which pleases me about responses to this and to a couple of others I've posted recently (mesa arch and fire pit) is that nobody has commented on their "hdr-ness". All are three-shot HDRs, blended to 32-bit TIFFs using the Photomatix LR plugin and tonemapped in LR. I find this is a really good way of getting HDR images which look natural to me. Interesting.
I wonder what you'd do to this if you had a 32-bit TIFF to play with. Shall I make it available?
Jeremy
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... The purplish tint of the cloud in the centre top of your version looks a bit odd...
My attempt was indeed rather crude, given the small jpeg available (and my time). I think I tried to get rid of the cyan cast in the upper sky and used a purple gradient. It could certainly be done with more precision. Given that you like your version best :), I do not think there is much point in playing with it further.
There is one technical remark I still want to make: there is a halo along ridge lines. That would typically be a result of too much global Clarity (or perhaps Photomatix artifact - I am not familiar with it though). The solution is to apply a narrow brush with negative Clarity along ridge lines.
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Given that you like your version best :), I do not think there is much point in playing with it further.
There is one technical remark I still want to make: there is a halo along ridge lines. That would typically be a result of too much global Clarity (or perhaps Photomatix artifact - I am not familiar with it though). The solution is to apply a narrow brush with negative Clarity along ridge lines.
My wife preferred yours! She particularly liked the increased yellows in the sky. De gustibus...
Thanks for the technical tip.
Jeremy