my beautiful italy Mill

...Giusè, mi piace molto,...6!

Bella foto soprattutto i riflessi dell'acqua

Gianluigi

A beautifully composed shot. Well captured and your post processing is spot on. Best wishes William.

Una gran bella immagine, mi piacciono i colori e il bel riflesso , ciao Giangiorgio

Superb image of an unusual and most interesting subject.  What was or is milled in the middle of the water?  You have captured excellent light and capitalize on it  with the reflection.  Best to you.  Larry

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I like the appearance of the reflection of the clouds, but the source is (not unexpectedly) too bright. Overall, it's the off-centered appearance of the "mill" (I have no idea what kind of mill is surrounded by water) that I find most striking, both its left-right location and the slight angle at which it sits (made even more obvious by the reflection). Both of those observations are simply that; I'm not able to make any kind of emotional connection to the photograph -- I don't know what the structure is and the aesthetics don't grab me. I know Giuseppe will identify much more strongly with his own photograph because of familiarity alone. I'm too far outside.

An opportunity of a lifetime photographing a most unusual Spanish grain mill that used both wind and tide to generate its energy was seemingly spent capturing clouds reflected on water. Sigh.

The mill itself is interesting, and certainly the story of why it's surrounded by water begs some questions.
But the image itself doesn't seem to address any of that.
The slight tilt of the mill is, indeed, interesting, but not enough to be unnerving. The clouds are unfortunately blown out, so their definition is lost. I find the placement of the building within the frame unsettling: neither close enough to nor far away from horizontal center. And vertical position seems quite weak.
The building is far too dark; very difficult to discern detail, especially that of the vanes. I'm also not sure I care for the head-on approach to the building. And the mountains on the horizon are simultaneously too much and not enough.
Not seeing much here that I'd be satisfied with, were it mine.

I'd like to know why this is interesting and worthy of discussion.

Not to diminish Giuseppe's photography in any way, this looks like a quick grab shot without careful forethought to composition or exposure, but to be fair Giuseppe probably never expected this to be the subject of a PoW discussion.

This is another one of those photos with a story behind it with which I'm just not familiar. I simply find it neither interesting nor evocative. The cloud treatment is attractive except for where it's blown out. I think the composition lacks as the structure seems too large for the frame and too close to the top for comfort. Other than these comments, I have nothing to add, except that the photographer has some very nice images in his gallery. I would recommend editing it down to remove some redundancies so the exceptional ones stand out.

What we look at is the windmill located in the laguna of Orbetello, Toscana (42.435678,11.205875).

This is a landmark that was already shot thousands of times, so it is really challenging to give it a fresh look. The sunset clouds could have added some drama, but unfortunately the blown highlights distract way too much.

A small boat heavily loaded with bags of grain underway to or from the mill would have added some story, but we all know that most often than not things do not fall so nicely in place when we are with the camera nearby.

Good try Giuseppe anyways. Perhaps you could share with us how you actually imagined this shot to come out and how you set-up for this?

In spite of everything that is supposed to be wrong with it, I find my eyes lingering over the entire frame as a whole--this might be one of those cases where the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts. Even so, the bottom third or so keeps pulling my eye down to see the glassy ripples.

In any case, I am going to go against the grain here and say that the blown-out clouds and the centered and slightly-too-distant mill do not bother me. The oscillating tide inside the mill no doubt causes something to move up and down and generate enough energy to grind the grain, but that does not interest me. This is pure sensory impact for me. I like it, and I think that for me it is largely because of the glassy ripples at the bottom: everything else in the frame is in service to the bottom third and those very nice and glassy ripples.

To expand on a theme from last week's discussion, I think that this one would definitely benefit from being displayed large.

--Lannie

I notice now that everything I said had already been summed by Gianluigi Albanese in the original comments:

I think that means something like "Beautiful photo overall the reflections of the water." Inserting punctuation marks as needed in English translation, I would render it thus: "Beautiful photo, above all the reflections of the water."

Yep, that's what I said above.

--Lannie

in my opinion it is not good photo. Burned sky looks very bad.

I find it quite alluring, my eyes naturally focus on the mill. The fact that it's not central to the photograph is neither here nor there for me, if anything it makes the photograph feel natural, it make me want to look around, take in the scene as a whole.
The clouds do look a little blown out, but I just thought that it may have been due to some slight HDR editing given the stark contrast of colours on the mill itself. Once again, I do not find it detracting from the photograph at all.
The only thing I found to 'spoil' the shot for me was the buildings on the hill, though had Giuseppe tried to move and keep the mill relatively central to the shot, then the vanes on the mill would not be facing the camera. With the exception of just photoshopping the buildings out, you would have a hard time trying to get the same shot without the buildings on the hill present.
Overall, I really like this photograph. The fact that there is so much to look at, yet you can not see any detail of the mill to great amount is what lures me in. It makes me want to try and look closer, to be closer to the mill. It makes me want to stand where he is standing, swim over and open the door and look around.
Keep up the great work Giuseppe.

Duncan

To begin with, there is nothing at all extraordinary about this photo, except the mill. That it used both wind and waterpower is extraordinary. That is where the emphasis of the photograph should have been. Forget the reflection and forget the dreadful sky (agree with above). Even if the photographer had to row out to that mill he would have made a more meaningful photograph or set of photographs.

Removing the offending sky and chopping the mill brings the focus on the door but retains the mill's structure in the reflection which I thought is a viable alternative. See below:

http://gallery.photo.net/photo/17170573-lg.jpg

Michael, sorry, but your version looks like you artificially chopped off a head. It's clear that it was not shot that way and, even though I don't mind cropping after the fact, this just looks plain silly, IMO. Does get rid of the blown clouds, but at what price?

Orange-hued clouds reflected in water is a cliché and the mill just standing there in the water with not much presence doesn't take it beyond an attempt at a pretty cloud picture, which fails since pretty cloud pictures have one major thing going for them . . . they're pretty. But blown out clouds in a photo are not pretty, so they don't work. Blown out clouds could work in a grunge attempt or a highly expressive maneuver, but here it just looks like a basic mistake of exposure.

I can see why the mill was a draw and applaud Giuseppe for being compelled to photograph it. I just don't think an interesting point of view was discovered or created for it.

I have stopped commenting on the POW , as it is quite sometime that the"collection" of them rangs from medium to bad, not interesting to say the list. So if PN wants more participation of its members, something has to be done!

Sometimes an image is just an image of something, a memory and document. Sometimes we want more but the elements or the timing or our own abilities limit that from happening.

Overall, there are two things at work, IMO, that give this image a bit of a claustrophobic sensibility. The first is the overall monochromatic warmth of the image. Warm tones minimize visual depth, pulling things forward and flatten them out. Second, the local contrast over much of the image is very flat as well, especially in the immediate areas around, and including, the structure. So, for me, the image feels a bit suffocating with only a bit of release/relief in those small patches of blue at the bottom of the image. Was that the intention?

The fact that this structure is "just off center" does somewhat diminish the emphasis on it that might have been stronger if it were centered laterally. This coupled with its depressed tonality, makes it recede a bit in importance while its mass suggests otherwise. The most powerful presence in the image is the sky and its reflection on the water. It has already been well covered how the blown out sky doesn't work but it, and its reflection, are very active--what type of role does that play in this image's meaning or reading? The reflection is nice but does it actually carry the photo or impart a sense of meaning to the image--especially with the mass of the building here?

I think the conditions and elements didn't really work well together (if we assume there has been no manipulation of the colors) at the time this image was created. It is an interesting structure, the reflections are nice but the combination of the two just isn't working in a complementary way. I think it would certainly make a great memory and a document of a cool building to share but I don't think it goes beyond that.

Great photo!

http://s05.flagcounter.com/count/ZWq/bg=FFFFFF/txt=000000/border=CCCCCC/columns=4/maxflags=12/viewers=0/labels=0/ http://2.s05.flagcounter.com/count/ZWq/bg=FFFFFF/txt=000000/border=CCCCCC/columns=4/maxflags=12/viewers=0/labels=0/

The great thing about photography today is that the images are maleable. Working from the original unprocessed image, the blown sky can be fixed, the excessive dodging on the town fixed, and the image cropped to new dimensions. The subject matter is very interesting. That is the important part of this image.
This would be a great image to 'hand off' to a bunch of people for post processing and see where it goes. Maybe that would be an idea for a new on-going photo.net thread?
I see in this image is an opportunity to print it (once 'fixed') on metallic paper. I think that would make make this image jump. The brassy colours and shimmering water would benefit from it.

I think John may be onto something there. A post processing thread would be very interesting indeed.