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| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 93 |
Dec 23 |
Comment |
Sorry to be so tardy in commenting! At first sight my response to this image was that it's a lovely, peaceful scene with very pleasant fall color.
As I spent a bit of time with it, I found I was disturbed by the tug-of-war bewtween the two bright and "contrasty" areas (the boathouse and the opening by the brightly light trees on the right). This would be an interesting dynamic were there some meaningful "dialog" or interaction between the two elements, but I found it frustrating.
A technical note: I think I see a narrow halo that runs along the treetops, and perhaps a wider but less obvious one as well Perhaps this is a trick of my eyes (or my mind), or was introduced by the JPEG conversion. I find in my own processing that this is something that I have to be very careful of if I try to dehaze or add clarity to a region that spans a complex light-dark region such as along those treetops. Very difficult to avoid. |
Dec 28th |
| 93 |
Dec 23 |
Comment |
Judging by the title, I'm guessing that I'll benefit from reading your narrative. It looks to me like you made the best of what you had to work with. Scenes like this are a real challenge -- so many things to consider, so many challenges to overcome. One point in case: how to deal with the area where the distant landscape is visible through the missing roof; where to line up the top of the ridge? more in closer so it falls lower in the opening? Is there a higher grand mvantage point? Move left or right? I suspect, all in all, you made a good decision.
I think the choice to convert to B&W was wise. It eliminates the distraction of the relatively uniformative color, and allows for working the tonal contrast to generate some visual interest.
I might have wished for a bit of a view into the dark recesses of the church. It's not so much that what one would find there might be interesting as it is that the blank blackness is frustrating. It looks like you pulled up the luminance of the (dried?) vegetation in the forground, to nice effect. |
Dec 28th |
| 93 |
Dec 23 |
Reply |
So now I've read your reply to Dawn, and all makes sense! And it's good to be reminded that sometimes part of the art is deciding just what to leave up to the viewer's imagination. |
Dec 25th |
| 93 |
Dec 23 |
Comment |
Nice to see you returning to your "barns" project. As always with your B&Ws, you've done a masterful job with the conversion, wonderful distribution of tones. I think B&W really serves these images well.
(I haven't yet read your narrative) I"m wondering what led you to shoot (or crop) as a panorama? Perhaps something, or things, you didn't want to include? To my eye, it feels a little bit cramped; I'd have liked just a little bit more of the hillside behind and the scrub in the foreground. Just a little, mind you. |
Dec 25th |
| 93 |
Dec 23 |
Comment |
Very nice, Darcy. I like how you handled the post-processing. A gentle hand, but effective.
You might consider cropping oin a bit further from the left, to convey a stronger sense of looking into the frame, which in turn (in my opinion) elevates a story about what is missing (an occupant on the bench). |
Dec 25th |
 |
| 93 |
Dec 23 |
Comment |
Well, this is stunning! (In the gentlest sort of way.)
I like the lopng exposure, the light and color are gorgeous.
Haven't read your narrative yet, so you might have mentioned this that I learned when my husband and I visirted NZ last March (the tale might be apocryphal). You might have heard that the tree was badly vandalized a couple of years back. The guide on our organized tour told us that the locals grew quite annoyed by the hordes of photographers, who were often very inconsiderate of the locale, failing to "leave no trace", so one night they vandalized the tree to make it less appealing. Even if it's not true, it makes for an interesting telling. |
Dec 25th |
| 93 |
Dec 23 |
Reply |
... okay ... have now read your narrative and the comments ... I am definitely the "odd man out" regarding the foreground ... just goes to show ya there's more than one right answer! |
Dec 25th |
| 93 |
Dec 23 |
Comment |
Well, that was a special moment, huh?
Reminder: I frame my comments before viewing the narrative, working with only the image and the title (if any).
All in all, it feels to me like a very promising capture. I'm perplexed by your cropping decision. To me, although it does somewhat concentrate the attention on the warmth of the sunrays, I find it now feels cramped. Personally, I alsao feel the loss of some interesting foreground subject, but I have to remember that I take a particular personal interest in stone. The rioght hand side of the frame is heavily weighted by the extended band of brightness; this band converges with the dark ridge in a sharp point very near the edge of the frame and this serves to direct my eye out of the frame. I returned to your original min order to be able to restore the top and bottom of the image, and then cropped in from the right to the point where the upper half of the right edge is now organized into seveal bands of more or less equal width. This regularity/uniformity tends to act as a barrier as the eye sweeps to the right. A benefit of this crop turned out to be an alignment of the leading lines (now restored) in the stone lower left with the sun rays sweeping down from the top. To me, this alignment functions as a unifying force pulling together the bright upper right with the darker lower left.
It's unfortunate that the highlights were blown out in the capture. No amount of post-processing can restore any detail in the bright sky, short of fabricating some. I don't know whether you could have reduced the exposure without losing then turning around and losing all detail in the darkest shadows, so this might have called for exposure bracketing.
Since I was working with the original, I also took a slightly different approach to color, cooling the clouds and the foreground somewhat to further enhance the warmth of the sun beams.
Hope you don't mind my fussing with the image. I do this not so much to say "you got it wrong" as rather to say "here are some other possibilities" ...
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Dec 25th |
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6 comments - 2 replies for Group 93
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6 comments - 2 replies Total
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