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| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Reply |
Hi Cheryl. Thanks for the insight that for you at least your eye stops on the left on the reeds. I wonder if that would be less true if the reeds on the left were a little less highlighted, and not competing with the trees in the background. I also wonder if the background is a little too soft and hence the eye wants to stay on the sharper foreground.
I also love the fog on the left in the original and fought to keep it. But I found there my eye followed the water back to the fog like you but then was stranded vs. coming back to the trees on the right.
I'm with you that cropping is a struggle. |
Feb 27th |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Reply |
Thanks Emily. It was a beautiful spot - but also really cold! |
Feb 22nd |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Reply |
Thanks Dale. I really love the fog and mood of the left side of the original, and tried so hard to come up with a way to make it work. I kept finding though that that left side - with the leading line of the water - would pull the eye to that corner. And then there isn't much there. The subject is clearly the highlighted trees on the right, so I couldn't get it to work. But you've given me some ideas so I will keep trying! |
Feb 22nd |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Reply |
Thanks Gerard. I searched forever to find this crop within the overall image. I think once I realized the image was really all about the highlighted trees, then I cut a great deal else out and tried to get that focus about on the thirds while also getting that balanced with the reeds in the foreground. |
Feb 22nd |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Reply |
Thanks Dan, both for the kind words and the suggestion on overdoing the highlighted trees. I don't seem to know when to stop. I will try dialing things back a bit there. |
Feb 22nd |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Reply |
Gerard, I had to look up what cris de coeur meant - having done that, that is not what I had in mind at all. I think your image would be easy to dismiss if one were looking for a conventional landscape - one which more often than not is about beauty. I don't like it as a conventional landscape. But I do like it as something less conventional. It makes me think. And it has emotion. As I look at it again, I perhaps would characterize it as conveying a chaotic feel. So, unlike the others, I would not eliminate the tire tracks or the power poles - they add to that sense of chaos. If you clean that all up, then pretty soon you have a conventional landscape which is not as interesting to me.
I find your images often make me think a lot, and question whether I tend to look at images with too narrow a filter. They make me want to experiment and question assumptions in my own photography. |
Feb 22nd |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Comment |
Hi Emily, what strikes me about this photo is the repeating motif of horizontal sloping layers - the crests of both near and far snow covered fields, the tree line, and then the layered clouds. All are sloping back and forth, one layer on top of the next. The image is also about luminosities vs. color, so I wonder if it wouldn't look even nicer as a black and white?
It is in interesting that you gave it the title "Lonely Winter's Day". I get calm, cold, still, and winter from the image, but not lonely. I am not sure how to make it impart more of a feeling of loneliness. |
Feb 10th |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Comment |
Hi Gerard, perhaps the pandemic is starting to get to me, but to me this image has a post apocolyptic feel to it - the dead crops, the sense of an abandoned winter place, the power lines seeming to lean and leading off to nowhere, the sky a color I don't think I've ever seen in a sky. Even the tracks in the foreground seem to suggest man was here before but now there are just tracks. I found the image emotional - a bit depressing, but emotional. I know that is not what you were going for although "cold" which you were is definitely correlated in part with what I felt. I didn't resonate with the horizon - there is nothing to pull me to that. I want to look at many things in this image, but the horizon is not strongly among them. |
Feb 10th |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Comment |
Hi Dale, seems like the lens is a keeper - looks plenty sharp to me, although you are stopped down pretty far so perhaps not the best test.
I wanted to jump in on the tension thing. I agree tension can be wonderful in an image. We all know the name of the game is to invoke emotion, and tension in the image usually means strong emotion. But I don't get a sense of tension from this particular image. I tend to agree with Dan that there is too much here and it is not ordered in a way that takes me from one thing to another. That is of course the challenge with a wide angle - it wants to capture too much. I can see an interesting shot were you to get in close to the pattern of trampled footprints, and to fill most of the frame with that. If you then enticed the geese to come to the edge of the frame (perhaps with some offered food), almost as if they were staring at the footprints in disgust, then you have tension - nature competing with the impact of man. The juxtaposition would be clear, and there would be no extraneous elements to confuse the message.
Have fun with the new lens. I have always found it easier to take good landscapes with longer lenses than with wide angles, simply because the lens helps prevent putting too many things in the frame. On the other hand, when a wide angle shot is done right, I think they can be really magical. |
Feb 10th |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Comment |
Dan, this is a very beautiful image. Sorry that the trip was less enjoyable than you wished, but I hope that you at least enjoy the images that you walked away with. If the rest are anything like this, it was a very worthwhile trip.
Overall I like the magenta dialed in to match the morning conditions and mood. The only improvement I see is perhaps with respect to the cyan'ish sky (at least cyan'ish relative to the more purplish blues in the water) which to me seems out of harmony. I did a quick adjustment below to see what pushing the sky a little more purplish would do. I like it that way better, but I don't know if others would agree. |
Feb 9th |
 |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Reply |
Thanks Paul. The Orton like effect was actually Nik's glamor glow which I believe is pretty close to the same thing. My thinking was that the subtle softening / glow in and around the area of frost would enhance the mystical feel of that "Secret Place". What do you think - too soft? I generally don't like softening anything but here I thought it added to mood. |
Feb 9th |
| 96 |
Feb 21 |
Comment |
Hi Cheryl. I think this is a beautiful image - I really love the strong complementary colors. I am perhaps not the best judge of whether saturation has gone too far as I struggle with this, but for what it is worth I think you have it just right here.
I am not a fan of the softer focus and fog added version. I think one of the things I love about the "usual edit" version as you call it is how amazingly sharp it looks. I particularly like the very sharp rendering of the fine shadowed tree detail against the sky. The soft version looks to me like "it just isn't sharp" if that makes sense. I also don't like the way the fog essentially brightens the whole image. I think the exposure in the "usual" version is spot on in terms of making the most out of the beautiful colors both in the sky and on the Pagoda (maybe lighten the details on the Pagoda just a bit).
Only a couple things come to me in terms of improvement. One would be perhaps to crop a little from the right edge - like you have in the softer version or perhaps a hair more. I find the tree right at the edge a little distracting, and I think the composition is also a little stronger and balanced coming in a little on the right. The other would be to see if you can't further bring out the "pink" reflection in the snow. It looks like it is there, and maybe a little tonal contrast could separate the sky reflections from the colder blue shadows, and tie the whole image together a little more. Just a couple thoughts. Very nice shot as it stands in any case. |
Feb 8th |
5 comments - 7 replies for Group 96
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5 comments - 7 replies Total
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