Photo2

Hi All

This is not normally the type of picture that I would take however I have

been reading up alot about composition and except for some clouds

missing it follows the rules.

I like it but don't love it and would like your thoughts?

Then you should list the rules for those like me who may not be familiar with the "rules" or all of the "rules". Yes? You have some problems here as I perceive this. (1) absence of contrast. (2) you selected a wide angle lens to create distance but the focal length has made your fence appear to lean.lean. I'd suggest keep the lens and toss the foreground fence.

Hi Asher

I am refering to the basic rules of composition. diagonals, the grass in front has texture so b&w and the direction of the grass leads your eye into the fence which then leads you to the small treas in the background bringing emphasys to distance. I shot this photo with an appeture of 9 and a standard 18-55mm lense (was set to 28mm).  The fence was leaning itself giving that wide andgle lense feel.  I think the reason why it is lacking contrast in my mind is because there is no detail in the sky, I suppose I could edit it a bit.

But thanks for the comments!

Elliot, I agree with Asher regarding listing the rules (I see while I wrote the critique you answered) but more importantly because it is far more important than rules is what is your intent? What are you wanting your photograph to say about the land, the day? This appears to be of farmland but being from the city I am not familiar with what the crop might be. Because it is not evident in the photograph that this is land that is plowed, planted and harvested, it appears as though it could be pasture but I don’t see any livestock. The strands of barbed wire appears to be spaced far enough apart that they are not intended to prevent a person from passing between the strands which adds to the implication that is it there to contain livestock. On a whole, this looks much like what I suspect the northern part of the Great Plains looks like. There is one thing that I find interesting and that is that the distant horizon almost blends into the sky—that is a feeling that I have often had in west Texas that the land and the sky almost become one and both go on forever. That is very much the feeling from this photograph. In a photograph every element within the frame bears a rlationship to all the other elements. It would be interesting to know your thoughts on the elements in the photograph. I personally could care less about the lack of contrast or the fact the fence leans—days can be dull and fences lean so it looks very normal to me. I did a post recently regarding barriers in photographs and in this case the fence functions as a barrier to a degree. It is a, it’s okay to look but don’t come in—it separates the city slicker cruising the country roads from the locals. Being angled and diminishing in perspective it implies an opening at some point. I am not sure that I find this a terribly interesting photograph but it is far from being a bad photograph because it does make a statement. Frankly I appreciate the fact that you did not give into conventional wisdom and gussy it up.