|
| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
Sharon, thanks for your observations and suggestions. For me, I wanted a pano like effect and you are right the so called "party" is more on the left, but I feel the rocks lead ones eyes through the scene diagonally back and forth. The couple of rocks on the right side of the frame are just enhancing elements. I think the only way to do the sky differently would be to replace it. I adjusted it as much as I could, I thought, and I rather not try to supplement a false/fake sky as some folks like to do. I will though take another look at this one and see if I can bring out a little more detail and color in that sky. Sometimes, as you know, we come to a limit of possibilities and just try to make it the best we can. I am reasonably satisfied and tend to believe if the main area of the image is interesting, the sky never really is observed significantly...but I could be wrong in that perspective. |
Sep 12th |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
Wonderful image, I believe in almost all regards. The composition and moment of capture is quite nice. I think you did a nice job lightening the animals and giving the overall scene a brighter look. My only suggestion is to tone down a tad...seriously just a tad the background at the upper 1/4 of the frame. Nicely done. |
Sep 12th |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
I like the story and our attention being brought straight on to the frog...that work. What doesn't quite work for me is it becomes just bulls eye view without dodging the areas around the frog. It is so dark around the frog that I am left want to understand more of the environment. Without reading the description and seeing the original, I had a hard time seeing that it was in water. I don't believe the description should lead me to understand the environment and even then I become stuck with just seeing the eyes and mouth. Personally, I like what you had in the original without pursing such an intense crop and darkening. I believe there is a lot of potential here to go back to the original and look for other alternatives to make the frog compelling. My eye wants to see more. |
Sep 12th |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
Beautiful image, Tom. The color, depth of field, focus, and composition work so nicely to give us a field rich colors. |
Sep 12th |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
Lisa, I like the composition and color. Dodge the nose so our eye can see more detail. I am not sure what to say about the area beyond the neck of the beast. I find the loss of detail, highlights, and blur distracting. I am not sure what you can do about it. I like what Oliver did, but I still see it and wonder if it is a resolution issue that becomes more pronounced in cropping, for I see it in the original. Selective adjustments of clarity, highlight management and contrast might help mitigate it some. |
Sep 12th |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
Carol, I like your image and the story is wonderful as is the overall composition and tone for my tastes. I often do what Mike suggests and tone down with a bit of burn the background, but the brightness is not unpleasing to me if you focused on reducing the highlights on the romping foxes and add a touch of clarity and increase slightly the saturation of their fur. It is a wonderful image. For me, not over darkening the background keeps a softness and brightness in keeping with the story. |
Sep 12th |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
Sharon,
First, you have wonderful color, exposure, tone, texture and depth of field for our eye to truly enjoy this scene both in a natural way and an almost abstract way. Second, here is a case where you have two ways of seeing the scene that are quite nice. I like both the original framing and your cropped version and I suspect there are more options. |
Sep 12th |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Reply |
Mike, Thanks for the comment. I am of the opinion that if I opened the shadow any more, the rocks would start to look garish and unnatural given the angle of the light. Even as seen by eye, the shadow area was very dark and I opened just enough to give a hint of detail. |
Sep 9th |
| 52 |
Sep 18 |
Reply |
Lisa, thanks for your comment and yes...it is the City of Richmond in Virginia. |
Sep 9th |
7 comments - 2 replies for Group 52
|
| 64 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
I find this image interesting for the simplicity of the gum tree elements. I suggest a more minimalist approach and just focus on the gum tree and let the blurred parts in the background be what they are. I feel the blurred tree at the bottom and bottom right a distraction. If you removed those, then you could crop up from the bottom a little and let the gum tree's natural flow be the star and all that we see and focus on as those in the foreground fade to the background. Nicely seen. |
Sep 12th |
| 64 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
This is a very nice monochrome. It works so much better then the original color. If there is one thing that I might like to see is more clarity in the vegetation, but that might be the image size and resolution. Nice work. |
Sep 12th |
| 64 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
The composition works for me. However, I find the resolution, halo and general lack of detail in the far ground distracting. In color, those issues are less pronounced, but still appear to be on my monitor so I feel the image doesn't quite work for me. |
Sep 12th |
| 64 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
Stan...I hate to say it, but the monochrome doesn't quite work for me. The original is splendid. Perhaps I am overly influenced by how well you got the depth of field for my eye to see both the blossom and the nice supporting leaves and stems, color harmony, tonality, texture, lines, edges, and overall flow of the blossom that when I can't find some of those elements in the monochrome version, I became disappointed. I perhaps I have a clouded perspective because of the reaction I had to the email you sent...that color version just popped for me as I proceed to post your image for the study group. It is well done.
Now one might argue that the blossom becomes the star in the monochrome version, but my eye wants to see more detail in the leaves albeit subtle. Regardless very nice image in both version. Finally, I don't gravitate to selective color version much, don't do it, and so it doesn't work for me either. With that said I have seen images where selective color is very interesting such as separating umbrellas out of a monochrome scene. |
Sep 12th |
| 64 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
I love this image and in monochrome it resonates wonderfully for me. I like the vertical, horizontal and curving elements of the subject as well as the supporting structures. I do not dislike the bricks. Actually I think they provide an enhancing sense of depth to the piece that is quite nice although for analysis I tended to debate with myself if they should go. I finally thought, gee, if they were gone, it would be just flat and not have something for my eye to see and settle all so briefly on before following the lines some more. I can see where it can be a distraction for some who want pure geometry or it could be as for me where I like the geometry a lot and find it in some strange way an enhancing element. I have to agree with Stuart on the tonality of bright to dark...the lights, midtowns, darker tones, black, etc. run the full gamut and work so nicely for this piece to be very pleasing to my eye. I have no suggestions...run with it. |
Sep 12th |
| 64 |
Sep 18 |
Comment |
Don, I appreciate the description because it helped me to figure it out sooner then if I had not had it. For me it is an abstract. It suggests spiral stairs and that is story and that is enough for me. I like it it a lot. I agree that the bright area left of center is a distraction and thus, its removal will help the viewer's eye wonder around and discover. The notion to play with color is something you could consider, but it doesn't really interest me. I find your perspective very pleasing and I like it lot. The geometry is marvelous. |
Sep 12th |
| 64 |
Sep 18 |
Reply |
Your observation about the sky, I appreciate. I have a color version of a different section of the river in Study Group #52 and the sky was mentioned as something for me to think about. However, I think if I have presented the main part of the image in a compelling enough way, the fact that the sky offered little for me but to crop out as much as I dared, it becomes a non-factor in the overall image. Morning side light makes skies challenging to present unless there are clouds worthy of detail to work with.
Regarding the house, I didn't want it to be the subject of the image but rather a part of the story with perhaps it being more of enhancing element. I actually in the monochrome version brought it out a little bit more then in the color version. BTW, the original presented here is a cropped and enhanced version which perhaps still needed some further work. I had pre-visualized this image as monochrome and so my focus was less about the color then it was the monochrome possibilities.
Regarding title...I suspect it is a little of both the photographer's view and the home owner view....nothing magical or particularly pointed about that. I had tossed it around in my mind some, but not a lot. I perhaps might not even use that title in the future to avoid confusion, should that be an issue. Of course, I haven't even begun to think about what I might use next time around. |
Sep 12th |
| 64 |
Sep 18 |
Reply |
Thanks for your observations, Don. I didn't think of this image as calm and serene. Rather I thought of it as full of interesting elements of a river courses it way through the City of Richmond in this residential area where there are many homes that look over the river. I intentionally place the house in the frame as an enhancing element to tell the story of living on the river. We all have different and interesting yet valid perspectives of what we like to see and I can understand that it might not be in taste for everyone to show some hand of man in such a scene. The audience would be different in its perspective here in Richmond, I think. |
Sep 12th |
6 comments - 2 replies for Group 64
|
13 comments - 4 replies Total
|
