Village. Area "Langhe" - Italy

Thanks.

Perfect.

 

--Lannie

Wonderful technique, colors, lighting, presentation.

like oil painting on a canvas!

Really beautiful picture and great post-production work! Love it.

Like it, very picturesque

//Roger

great image

Sono in sintonia con gli altri commenti, e' un bellissimo quadro artistico. Mi complimento con te per la capacita' di lavorare le foto e riuscire ad ottenere questo risultato. Ciao Alessia

Beautiful work ! Catalin

Please note the following:

 

This image has been selected for discussion. It is not necessarily the "best" picture

the Elves have seen this week, nor is it a contest.

Discussion of photo.net policy, including the choice

of Photograph of the Week should not take place here, but in the Site Feedback forum.

 

The About

Photograph of the Week

page tells you more about this feature of photo.net.

 

Before writing a contribution to this thread, please consider our reason for having

this forum: to help people learn about photography. Visitors have browsed the gallery,

found a few striking images and want to know things like why is it a good picture, why

does it work? Or, indeed, why doesn't it

work, or how could it be improved? Try to answer such questions with your contribution.

 

I just don't know where to begin. Well, actually, I do know. I began by looking at your portfolio. I think one should study the style of an artist before commenting on a single piece of his art. Maybe what the elves show us is a fluke. I was enthralled by your presentation. I could rate your work with a three word scale: Good, Better, and Best. Or one, two and three. or any number of simple terms. I rate this week's POW as a two, or one of your better works. You have many that make me envious of your skill--Many number threes. Even at a two it surpasses most of the POW images I've seen in many weeks.

 

You work photoshop like a painter using his palette. I think this work and your general style is supurb. I wish I had the talent to accomplish half of what you do. I suspect you will get a number of comments on work being over photoshopped, but not so in my mind. If god hadn't wanted artists to use what was at hand, he wouldn't have given out colors or textures or imagination. You use them all very well.

 

Congratulations on having such painterly skill and for being selected this week.

 

Willie the Cropper

More pixels, please! This reminds me of looking at a tiny oil painting at the gallery, and you have to wonder why it was painted so small. What is interesting about this photo is that its solid composition and "flow" are still apparent, even though everything has been smudged out in an attempt to reproduce the appearance of an old oil painting. The sense of depth is enhanced by smudging out the background. We all try to get the sharpest lenses we can, but this shows us that sharpness is sometimes overrated.

 

In the end, though, this photo is less about the vineyard and more about post-processing. I would rather this type of magical effect be captured by some interesting lighting after a storm, or something like that.

Thanks to everyone for comments. Erik, you are right, my goal with these kind of images is to create photos with some feeling of paintings, NOT to paint, and this result is more evident with high res pictures where I can see details and feel a strange taste for a completely new representation of scenario. This one is similar to the old technique of colorize b&w photos, but with an incredible stronger (MUCH stronger!) creative potential, allowed by digital tools. Anyway, photo is the centre of this work, becouse with photos you select a piece of world, with its distinctive character of shape, colours, shadows, meanings, etc. ONLY enhanced by camera or darkroom (chemical or digital). Almost every photo of my portfolio represent a real landscape or building that you can see if you go there. I wish to remark that, a clean and well exposed photo, is necessary to come through processing unharmed: you can remove if you have a lot, but it's difficult to add if you have less (the principle of over_under exposed photos :)

Elin: interesting your idea (frankly... not properly new), so try it and I am sure you could obtain funny results.

Thanks again for your interest.

After reading a "Master Photoshop in 3 Days" type of book, most people can cover the flaws on a not too good HDR image. I might be wrong, please let me know if there are some special techniques have been used. Nice try, but this is not a once in a life time capture, not even close.

I really like the seamless depth created by the 2 diagonal patterns of stakes. I also like the impressionistic application of colors throughout the scene.

 

What I dislike the most is the unbalanced composition. All the centers of interest (the foreground highlighted stakes, the town, and the distant hint of a town) are on the left side of the image. Especially static is the placement of the foreground highlight directly in front of the town. I would move the town so it is slightly right of center. (with photoshop, anyone can move mountains) This would create a more balanced composition that leads the eye back and forth across the image as it goes from the foreground to background.

 

I also think the large amount of sky is out of proportion to it's visual interest. I would lower the upper clouds and arrange them out of their static horizontal line.

I like the composition and light, maybe has need for some sharpness

Vittorio, please tell us how you do this. I have looked over your portfolio and I am sitting here in awe. Do you use a program besides Photoshop? If so, if you will tell me what it is, or what technique you use, I will pay you. I might have to knock over a convenience store or two, but I will pay you.

 

Congratulations on this shot and other great shots, the best approximations to painting with photography that I can recall.

 

 

 

--Lannie

Moderator note: After deleting and editing way too many comments on this image challenging the "choice" and whether this is a photo or not....

We ask that people provide a critique rather than a commentary especially when a comment starts to generate a discussion about photography vs photoshop or if this is a photo or not. We would ask for comments expressing your opinion about the image and why the post processing works or does not work for you - Not about whether it should have been done or whether it is a photo or not - but how it could have been improved etc. etc.. Thanks. Mary Ball - Moderator

I like what was done here- aesthetically with the PS manipulation. I do not have to have it as a style myself to appreciate it, (and mine is far from it) but I think a lot of you folks think he has to. As mentioned, (and as advanced artists' would have noticed) it is 'left heavy' though. We follow the diagonal and go from bottom right to top left, via down the vineyard which is descending left, to a village which is centered but 'left heavy' due the shadows 'weight' and to the far off city in upper left.

 

The fact that something is small (such as a small delicate painting that you wish was a bit larger due to such a nice feeling to it) only suggests the artist has done a superb job in presentation.

 

I do find this to be one of his better pieces Willie, so it's a 3 in my book, not a 2, even with the balance off a bit. Most of his other pieces are TOO heavily worked, this one is just right.

 

And finally yes, it does prove you do not need for an image to be sharp to be appreciated as a very strong piece of art. More dream than reality, and a lot of us think sharpness is more important than 'feeling'. But feeling trumps sharpness any day, (in my and most judges eyes anyways) thus this is the type of image that wins photo competitions and most folks go 'why?'. The why is because as you grow as an artist, you start to appreciate a wider range of styles. And again, and also as mentioned above, molta bella.

I am not fond of this image, NOT because I am against digital manipulation (I'm not), but what I saw here is a weak composed photo with no real theme gets manipulated heavily to gain a painterly effect. I like the skill with which the effect being done - but that does not make this ordinary photo extra-ordinary. Of couse, as said, POW is not necessarily the best photo of POW - but should be a source for learning. So, only thing that I can learn from here is how the photographer achieved this digital painterly effect. Can Vittorio share some thoughts on that ? Thanks

Thank you again for interest. Let's go for sone replay :-O Above all, this picture is a photo. I obtained it with my camera (Oly e-400), in a particular moment of day and targeting a very beautiful (for me)

scenario. Nothing is painted (but... can you figure, I pass entire days with microscope painting single pixels of single stake?! Perhaps I wold be a bit funny, but not full demented. Objects, shadows and lines that you see in my picture are also in original photo. This is no paint nor rendering. I have changed, enhanced (not distorted) colours and details_softness having in mind colours and atmosphere of some old painters; my target was to repreduct that atmosphere in a photo and, when someone say to me "but... this is a paint!" he make me happy, becouse I know this is a photo and, if you are a good photographer you can see this one. The trick is simple: obtain a good exposed photo, study character of colours that you want to apply and start your work (on line you can find a planitude of resource about colorizing photos) but... as every tool, it's necessary to study to learn the use. Photoshop, or what you wish, is the contemporary darkroom, and darkroom is a fundamental moment in photographic creation. When I developped my b&w photos in chemical darkromm, I didn't say" My God, where are my REAL colours? This seems a damned drawing!!" I'm thinking about the large works in darkroom of one of my mythical photographer Ansel Adams (OOops... excuse me, perhaps was he a painter? :)) To sum up, I think from Daguerre to Photoshop, photograpphy has developped a rich range of styles and possibilities, ALWAYS STARTING FROM CAMERA, and producing different typology of photos, what kind you like is a matter of taste, and photo.net are right to cover all this way. But now... I need to go cleaning my hands, soiled of varnish!!!

OK, Vittorio has chosen to use photography and photoshop as media to render a highly stylized image of a small village. For me, it is a nice image, but no better.

 

Why? The composition seems to fight itself; the image divides quickly into three parallel sections, with the middle and bottom section fighting each other for primacy and the top third fading quickly into the background. I think the most interesting element here is the foreground, with the vinyard's parallel lines. But the vinyard is composed in such a way that the eye is led directly and quickly into the village, without any pause to dwell on those lines. It is hard to really focus on what is the most interesting element, because that element just kicks your eye to another part of the canvas. And whehn your eye reaches the village, just off-center, it just stops. Everything else has been softened into the background, and there is no compositional tension created.

 

It may be that there would be more interest and more to engage the eye in a larger version; the impressionists would have had their brush strokes, the Barbizon school its intricate details; each drew one into the work and created a flow for your eye across the overall work. Without seeing this image larger, however, it is hard to tell.

 

So, for me, a perfeclty nice but not an extraordinary image. It is more a study of a technique that an interesting composition per se.

I have to disagree with most of the criticism posted in this discussion and say that is a remarkable image. Sharpness? Small? As the great Keith Carter says "Sharpness is overrated." It's not about sharpness or accuracy or how "photographic" an image is ... it's about vision, truth and creativity. This image is extremely well composed, contains interesting elements and is stunningly processed. 7/7 in my book and "bravo" to Vittorio.

There are quite a few people who have commented that have not really critiqued this shot, but instead complained about the post processing. But there haven't been many comments on why this particular type of processing doesn't work for them, instead the complaints seem to simply lie in the fact that it is no longer what the camera 'saw'.

That is true of any photo from a digital camera. Unless you want us to start posting RAW files. The second you or your camera converts a file from raw it is automatically changed from what was on the sensor. Many haven't really stated why that is a problem or why the photographer's choice of post processing doesn't work for you, only that you don't like that kind of post processing. That is more of a personal preference, not a critique. That would be no different than going into the insect forum and complaining that someone has posted a picture of a bee because you can't stand bugs.

What the camera 'sees' is completely and totally subjective. Be it digital or film the photographer chooses to achieve a certain type of look. Two different film shooters could shoot velvia and ilford respectively, but few would consider one shot altered and the other 'real'.

Moderator note: Clayton hit the nail on the head - Please note that comments should be critiques - not complaints or a simple expression of your personal preference. I've edited and deleted comments again to that effect. If you address the post processing - please state what works or does not work about the effects.

Love the composition, the 'poles' in the foreground and the village small and in the center.

Bold choices. I also love the colors; the golden hue that permeates this piece adds to the

dream-like vision you've presented. Your photoshop skills are incredibly impressive; I use

photoshop quite a bit for art and some for photos, and this is far beyond anything I have

done. My only critism is maybe you went just a bit further than what I would have liked to

seen. I would like to see a little bit more realism in the piece. Some of the other pics in

your portfolio have a bit more of the original flavor of the photo. Just to state: I'm not a

traditionalist in any sense of the word, but if I didn't know this was a photo, I may

mistaken it for an oil painting, or a photo of one. Beyond that, I still think its remarkable

skill you've shown here.