Mesa Arch

Lens and angle good -- I like it !

Orlin.

Marc

 

I uploaded the uncropped version of this image into my recent uploads folder. The uncropped version is high end scan from a professional lab. My first submission looks quite muddy by comparison. If you to the top of this page and click on recent uploads, it will bring you to the correct page.

 

Hokum

 

To address your concern about digital manipulation. The scan in which you correctly identified some PS artifacts was the result of using unsharpening mask and the cloning tool to remove some of the halo that it produces. The problem with my home scanner, Microtek 1800f is that it does not have a holder for 6 x 17 cm transparencies. Thererfore you have to tape the slide to a glass surface and it is difficult to get the slide to stay flat. So the resulting slide ends up with a soft area. The manipulation was to restore the original state of the slide and not change it. Cloning was also used extensively to remove all the dust that accumulates on the glass.

 

Regarding the topic of originality, correct me if I am wrong, but I have yet to see among the hundreds of Mesa Arch images posted on the Internet, one shot with the panoramic format. Statements were made to the effect that it is less common, I would like to know where they saw them. The arch of Mesa has very little arch, it is more horizontal then say the Delicate Arch. This is why I thought the panoramic format could capture a great deal of the arch while retaining the proportions of the background elements. For those not familiar with the 6 x 17, the viewfinder has little or no magnification, so what you record on film is almost identical to what you see with your eye or you looked through a piece of paper with a 2 by 7 inch slit cut in it. Please take a look at the full version. Thanks.

Morey,

 

Although the scan is obviously better in the full version you uploaded, I think you

did this image a great service in you smart cropping. Well done.

 

Tony, you almost got me to embarrass myself in public (wouldn't be the first time, of

course) by typing a long, boring response to your praise of film music--which often

seems to be obviously derivative from 19th century warhorses (to the point of lifting

entire measures). I'll just mention that if you wonder what Beethoven's film music

would sound like there is the incidental music like The Creatures of

Prometheus and, of course, Fidelio--they may not have had film back then, but

opera was certainly nothing new.

Mark

 

I tend to agree with you that the cropped version looks better, however, you are also dealing with size constraints of displaying a panoramic image on square scene. The 16 x 48 in. enlargement I have gives the actual feeling of what it is like to look out from this arch. It is the only one that really captures of my images that feels like being their.

Like Morey, I live in Denver and I visit the desert often. While I've had a few

good shots, I find the challenge to be trying to find something that will both fit

in the frame and at the same time express the vastness of the landscape.

Once you get over the fact that the rocks are red and you can see for miles, it's

difficult to take good pictures in the desert. I think that's why some spots get

heavy traffic. All the photogs run (or drive) arond the desert and find the same

interesting things. I don't think there's harm in that.

 

For the record, I've never seen any other picture of Mesa Arch, so I'm just

judging on the merits of this photo.

 

When I first saw this photo, I felt clausterphobic and acrophobic at the same

time. I think it does a great job of conveying the character of the landscape

while still having an interesting foreground. I think the foreground is a little too

confining though. Almost forces your eye to the left side of the arch and off the

cliff.

 

I really like the texture and tones in the rocks. The warmth really belies the

cool snow to the right. I also like the texture in the air (SMOG, I think someone

called it) it gives a dreaminess and good sense of depth perception to the

rock in the distance.

 

All in all, good shot Morey and keep up the good work!

 

Cheers,

Regas

I think there is no crime in photographing something that has been photographed many times before. In fact, I think it can serve a good purpose. It raises the bar both technically and in terms of interpretation. It can be a worthy challenge to discover something new the overly familiar.

 

In this image, I love the illusion of the metaphorical gateway in this otherworldly place and its furnace-like glow. The layers of depth create photos within photos. It stirs my imagination.

 

For informed and experienced photo viewers, it's easy to dismiss a common subject as unoriginal and unimpressive. For example, I love photos of Antelope Canyon. It is an extraodinarily beautiful place. But I've seen so many great shots that it takes a very special version now to raise my heartrate. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt and it was never truer than with photos of common subjects.

 

An appealing thing about the place, this Mesa Arch or wherever it is (and yes, I would love to go there and try my own interpretation), is that pictorially it has very strong compositional elements. The play of field and ground, framing, texture, dynamic balance, and rhythm make this image a textbook reference for photo design.

 

Unlike Antelope Canyon (and yes, I'd like to go there too), I have not seen enough versions of this image to yet be jaded by the magic of the place of the strong rendering in this work.

Thanks for uploading the full frame, Morey. I was hoping for a right side that would be as beautiful as the left, but I have to say that the right side didn't add much in fact. Your crop now makes more sense to me. Thanks again. Best regards.

What did the artist intend to convey? Perhaps we should see photography as a way of expressing part of the soul and mind of the artist instead of just recording images. Almost everything in the twentieth century has been about de-sacralization. There is no meaning to our existence. Even now science is formulating theories on the myth of self. Self is merely an illusion your brain creates when you say I, but of no significance one way or the other. We appreciate Beethoven's music, but we seldom attempt to penetrate the beauty of the mind and soul that can feel life with such passion to create such music. Was his music just the result of some fortuitous combination of brain cells and life circumstances or events of life? He had the right teacher, his parents were musicians, his city was very muscial, etc. What about his will to create? Was his music the result of his struggle to make sense out of this world, to understand why we exist and why we love?

 

So we spend all this time on technical detail of the image, is it balanced, does it have a focal point, is it original, etc. Yes, these are important elements of art, but is that all there is in art?

 

Perhaps we should talk about what the image evokes of emotion, how the artist achieves this, what it makes you feel, as some have, and how the artist achieved this?

 

Is art not about the fusion of heart, mind and soul of the artist with the medium they choose to express in? Or is it merely technique?

 

What is it that attracts someone to Mesa Arch or to the solitude of these Western landscapes? Is it just nice postcard opportunities?

Or is it something else? We treat photograpny like a technique where you just carry a box around and place it and various locations and record images. We often ignore that each of us is trying to express something about ourselves, our lives and the meaning we give to this universe and forget that each image contains a record of the entire life of that artist, their struggles, their passion, their success and failures, their victories and disappointments.

 

Yes, it is the same old Mesa Arch and for that matter Monet and Picasso used the same old oils and the same old two dimensional canvases to express themselves. Yes, we have seen this technique for centuries, how unoriginal. Perhaps our medium as photographers are the elements of nature: rock, light, water, clouds. But how we combine them to make art is what matters.

 

Perhaps the artist is saying, "I have understood something about my existence, our existence, and this place and this moment expresses it for me".

To these good thoughts, Morey, I would say that whether it's 14 karat or 24 karat, we still call it gold.

 

The consumer will buy or wear either without much thought for anything other than the fact that it's theirs, or that they're wearing it on any given day, but the assayer will take great pains to determine the actual content and the level and nature of any impurities. This is how I look at our activity here on photonet, not as a means of putting any image down, but as trying to determine the level of purity inherent in any particular piece. I see all of us here as assayers of photography.

I've always liked this image of yours and said so months ago. Congratulations and sympathy are in order here. Give me a call in Frisco. We still need to do another shoot.

I've never been to the mesa arch or any nearby area in my life, but at this very moment, I have numerous idea about how I would've composed the shot differently.

 

in terms of originality, I could swear that places like the antelope cave and the mesa arch literally have an "x" marked on the ground that says, "stand here to photograph the vista."

 

some possible ideas if you decide to retake this shot:

be daring, go there with a fisheye lens, and shoot from directly behind the arch, even if it involves some cliff hanging. climb the arch, if possible, and shoot downward on it. lean up against one side, and shoot into the other side on the arch; maybe this is nature's version of the st.louis arch. bring a model with you, dress her up in white, w/ orange eyeshadow/and make-up to catch the radiant hues created by the sun's reflection off the rocks.

bring a 600mm telephoto, and shoot this baby from the bottom of the canyon (the view that 'nature may have, looking at all of the tourists taking people out into the open valley). take a trail down the side of the cliff into the valley, and shoot the arch on your way down. shoot in during a thunderstorm, use an ND filter, a low shutter speed, and watch the arch 'melt'. Go during a snowstorm.

If there's enough ice up there, bring a couple portable flash units, and bounce them off the ice.

Hell, you could even shoot all the millions of people that flock here and stand in the same spot (or you could try to disprove the criticism that this angle actual reflects an attempt at originality).

 

I do enjoy the colors and lighting, but don't restrict your eye to the view of the masses. great photographs, especially nature and landscape, take the viewer's breath away, as he or she stands there wondering how the heck you made such a unique shot.

Yep, that would do it, Moro. Just stick a model in there, have her lean over and give us some cleavage, and we would have instant originality.

 

What Morey was saying about the disappearance of the soul qua self is perhaps what almost all nature photography is addressing. The typical nature photographer is still in awe of nature qua nature, even if every view of nature is different and even if persons do bring to nature something of themselves through which they interpret nature. In spite of those facts, and the virtual (and frustrating) impossibility of grasping the thing in itself, there are vistas in nature that manage to take us outside of ourselves, which remind us of something that I can only conceive of as the "other," something trascendent which thus presupposes the true existence of a "self," since concepts such as "self" and "other" can only have meaning together, in opposition to one another. I am not saying that studio photographers cannot have this same awe, since it is obvious that they can, as the photographs of a Marc Gouguenheim or a John Peri amply show. Nonetheless, there is something in nature which can overwhelm, and, when we want to capture the fleeting light, we are trying, I think, to capture that overwhelming mystical sense of "other," which throws our sense of "self" not only into obvious relief, but which reaffirms that sense of self. Science cannot in itself deconstruct the self. Only the human imagination can do that, but it needs a self as a precondition for positing the non-existence of self.

 

We look into nature when we are truly inspired by the actual vistas out there to be not so much created as discovered, I believe, and the natural world seems to have been already discovered, and thus (it seems) the only thing that we can do is to create some new or original perspective of it.

 

All of this is my way of saying that the persistent theme of "originality" that keeps coming up throughout this thread is really about a lot of things besides originality per se: it is about the grasp that a perceived abstraction of reality has upon our very selves or souls, which is perhaps why persons disagree so much about this intangible when discussing originality.

 

Forgive me for venturing into the philosophy of aesthetics. Heaven forbid that we should want to confuse aesthetics and originality.

Good one. I like the colors, lighting, and depth of field, also the small patch of snow.

 

Regarding some of the posts...there is something about the anonymity of the Internet dicussions that allows people to write/say things they might not otherwise say or write. Sometimes I wonder if people really mean what they write on Internet message boards, or if they are more projecting their emotions in words.

"...we felt the light and colors were here the most outstanding."

True, the colors are outstanding, but not more so than others. This particular shot's strengths, however, are in the gently bronzed cieling of the arch and the golden highlights on the (eastern?) faces of the rock at the left of the picture. I cannot help but imagine there is a pit of glowing lava just beyond and below the arch.

 

"As for the composition..."

If Kitzman's aim is to capture the texture of the terrain and the light of the sun, then his composition is successful. Perhaps the lower-right corner is a little dull, perhaps distracting, in contrast to the rest of the picture, but I don't think it should be removed, since it is part of the actual scene.

 

I like the way the arch looks like a giant mouth eating the tiny mountains for breakfast, whereas it is nothing in size compared to its apparent meal.

 

Beautiful shots in your other folders! Love the moose!

I apologize for commenting on the commentary, but the Beethoven analogies are all way off base. A musical score is a blueprint for a performance. A musical performance is a rendering of a score in time into sound. In photography the score is better analogized to the negative and the print to the performance if analogized at all.

 

Where it gets interesting for me is when I think about the "piece" as an entity independent of its score and performance. That is, the true form of the work. And, as we all should know, form follows function. The right question then becomes, "does this photo represent/clarify/depict/elucidate the form in its performance?" Whether is has been rendered before in either an excellent performance or a crappy performance has no bearing. No photo will ever truly render the form perfectly, as that only exists as an abstraction - unobtainium. Just as no perfect performance of the 9th will ever be made, no perfect photo of anything will ever be made. But it is fun seeing (and hearing for music) the various attempts.

Mark, I never said that all film music was good. It thought it was merely ubiquitous. Most contemporary orchestral composers are just underpaid musicians looking for a film to score (and dinner on the table). Otherwise, why would they bother?

Regarding opera, ballet music etc. from the classical composers: it could still not be recorded. Having a viable recording medium is an essential element of modern music that was completely missing in classical times. I'd be willing to take bets that classical composers - except in their heads - never had the chance to hear their own classical pieces with as much fidelity and balance as we can hear them today. Or are we just listening to different things?

Concerning Morey's picture, there is argumentation in this thread over a microscopic piece of edge effect on the left. It exists (Morey tells us) as an artefact of unsharp masking, less than perfectly fixed by the clone tool. That such argument even exists is testament to the ability to zoom in closer to a picture than would be possible in, say, a gallery (unless the viewer carried around a magnifying glass in his or her pocket, and could distract the security guard long enough to get within an inch of the print).

The long-term result of the improvements in recording and display technology that we "enjoy" today has been to provoke the kibbitzers of the world to come out of their holes, in full nit-pick mode, the final victory of trees over forest that has also seen word-counts determine political bias, body-counts determine victory or defeat and distance from the car park determine artistic integrity.

The single reported fact that Morey had to get up early on a cold morning to make this shot has elevated it, in my eyes, at least two notches higher on the scale of excellence. The last time I did this myself (with the same camera), the lens fogged continually, the shutter mechanism jammed repeatedly and my fingers stuck to the tripod from the cold. I remember it as a lonely hour of my life, rescued by a hearty breakfast afterwards (and all I had to do was stagger down to the shoreline from a warm tent to get started).

Morey, how did you manage the more elemental physical factors in producing this photograph, by the way?

e.g. Did you wear gloves?

Sorry for such a technical question (when I know the discussion should be purely about creativity, originality and the ethics of freezing to death for your art), but can we have some more guidelines on your technique other than the enigmaticly phrased "cropped" please? All this nit-picking (or should it be pixel-picking) about motivation and committment is getting tedious (and a big mea culpa from me, before anyone else says it... "Ludwig, get back in that coffin!").

Tony

 

As far as extreme weather is concerned, I seem to transcend it altogether when I am focused on a shot. I came back from one trip with enough mosquito and horsefly bites to need blood, but I just concentrated on setting up my large format gear and ignored the little buggers. Last winter I hiked seven miles, uphill with no food, water and a light breakfast, but fifty pounds on my back, to get a shot of the Maroon Bells in the winter. About six miles into the hike I experienced the most intense hunger I have ever felt. I had to visualize food just to stay focused and had to rest several times...I had not factored in the altitude. When I got to my destination the mountain was completely fogged in. I did find a hut with little bars of chocolate and packets of sugar to revive me. Lunch never tasted so good when I got back. Anyway, photography is like a meditation and maybe because of the anticipation of good shot, your adrenalin or endorphins are just flowing enough to make you oblivious to general annoyances. In the case of Mesa Arch, I was fortunate there was very little wind and the dry climate makes the cold much easier to tolerate. The low humidity makes your gear function properly, low like 15% humidity. I am sure other photographers have experiences where you find the zone. Cheers.

There's nothing wrong with a good classic shot. And to all those amazed that you could get up so early and/or hike so far (that brutal half mile), I'm just happy there's not that many people who do. Keep up the good work man.

Ray Palmer

Morey,

In expressing your feelings about your rendition of this particular spot and your interpretation of it, you have touched on a subject I put forth as a proposition earlier on, mainly that of finding the essence of such a place instead of seeing only the rock and the shape it creates. You have introduced that old adage about the photographer imparting his soul through the medium, and in doing so you have opened yourself up for scrutiny. Here, the test criteria being: were you successful in elevating this scene to a level in which the viewer can understand YOUR message? The reason I say this is that this very spotde factodoesnt allow for many interpretations since its outcome is predetermined by three static players, i.e. the arch, the distant hills, and the spires (of which there is less than a handful to set your sights on). However that is true only if one sees with the eye and not with the mind. What I was alluding to on my previous comment was meant as a kind of sarcastic voice in which I challenged those who usually try to find the spirit of the photographer, via the photograph, and who have no problem claiming to know the interpretation of the photographers vision or giving their own. This was especially the case because of the many claims that there is nothing original about the photograph and I was, paradoxically perhaps, trying to see is somebody took the bait and gave a metaphysical interpretation to this scene.

However, you have to admit that this particular type of image (landscape) is per-se a completely different genre than that of people photography in which it becomes much easier to stamp a philosophical crux to, or find the meaning of, a conveyed message (as through facial or body expressions).

 

For the sake of the argument Ill declare that I believe you have successfully captured the essence of this place, and done so, very convincingly. By this I mean that, when I see this particular photo, I can appreciate the grandeur and the majesty of these canyons and these plains, and I dont need to add anything to the photograph, or desire to see a different perspective in order to feel safe in voicing my appreciation of your rendition. I find this a very pleasant view with lots of warmth in spite of the obvious cold snow (I too have frozen my hind at Bryce Canyon).

 

I find this image to be alive with spirit even though it is plainly inanimate. I see a dangerous and hostile territory with no place for life, but at the same time, I see ancient hunters scouting the area for prey. In can envision a time when Indian tribes lived in this land and the children roamed the area in TRUE freedom and climbed these very rocks. I can see the children climbing on top of the arch while daring each other to get just a little closer to the edge. I can see a wedding ceremony back at the village or camp, and I can smell the food for miles as I inch my way there and thinkIll be home soon and join my friends. I can see a medicine man performing a ritualistic ceremony beside a burning fire trying to cast the evil spirits out of a sickly boy or girl. I can see the rugged face of this medicine man right through the billowing flames and smell the smoke as I hear the crackling of the fireand it looks like a very fine photograph to me. But all this is just a dream, a vision which is past; one whose only proof of existence is the echo in these canyons that resonate the laughter of an Indian child and subdues the voice of him who screamed therein here I am, I can see, I know that I am alive. I can hear the soft melody of a flute player; it is a sad and sweet tune that calms my spirit and gives me hope to carry on. I can feel and even hear the solitude in this place and I have peace in my heart, I am able to alienate myself from the troubles and the pains of this life and take joy in his melody. I can see myself as one of these people in this distant past and I know that I belong.

Nice. Simple, good composition, shadow details and controlled highlights and the color puts gives the drama.

Congratulations! Wonderful shot, please don't crop anything, the snow makes an interesting contrast. This is Nature and it's full of intreguing contradictions and that just makes it more beautiful. Nice capture!

I don't know, but it appears that the underside of the arch is not illuminated by direct sunlight. Instead, it appears that sunlight bounced off something to illuminate the under side of the arch. Was that light reflected from rocks in the area, or were portable reflectors used instead? Or perhaps even a portable flash unit and a deep orange gel was used to light up the underside of the arch? Clue me in, please. In my opinion, it is a great shot, no matter what techniques were used.

Chris

 

You are correct about reflected light illumining the underbelly of the arch, however, it is naturally produced by the light bouncing off the cliff face. When you see the arch to start glowing for the first time it is really quite exciting. Hopefully, you are there before sunrise and just as the sun rising over the horizon, the bottom of the arch starts to glow deeper and deeper with each passing minute.

After about fifteen minutes the glow is gone and the rock returns to the color you see above the arch. Thanks.

Isidro

 

Thanks for your wonderful narrative. It does remind us of the indigenous people who inhabited this region long ago and how places like this most of have had a sacred meaning for these people.

 

I would encourage everyone to read Isidro's words, they are really quite beautiful.

I just came back to this photo after being away for a couple of days, and it hit me with more force than when I first saw it. That reminds me of music that grows on one, a song, perhaps, that is good when one first hears it but just gets better and better. All of the elements of the photo that have caused some to criticize it seem with time to enrich it and give it a certain depth, a certain complexity that makes it more and more interesting with more viewing. I don't think that I shall ever tire of this photo.