Mesa Arch

Congrats on POW Morey.

You've caught great if not original light.

Next time shoot it in moonlight on February 29, with UV filters on Veliva 100F, naked with your 617. No ones done it before and it should please the jaded among us.

 

Speaking for myself, I just can't stand looking at anything with such beauty anymore. It's just all been done. I think I'll stay home and watch MTV. ;-)

I do not understand all the harsh criticism for lack of creativity in this photo. All major scenic attractions have been photographed many times, but each is still unique, good or bad. This is Morey's interpretation of what he saw during this moment in time. Is there a photographer among us who, witnessing such a scene, would not break out his camera simply because the particular location has been photographed before? What of the pride in taking a good photograph - and I think this is a good photograph - to hang on the wall because it is YOUR photograph. Granted, witnessing such a scene makes it easier to capture a good picture, but Morey still chose the camera, lens, film, perspective, etc. to capture this scene. That is all part of originality and creativity. Having said that, I would have cropped the photo a little tighter on the right side to reduce the hot spot that overly draws my eye..... Nice job....

The primary element of photography is light. We as human beings are inherently attracted to light. Witness the fascination and delight we derive from a fireworks display, simply the interplay of light and geometry. Perhaps the Pythagoreans had it right when they said that number is the essence of the universe. So we have light, geometry and number. When the photographer can succeed in penetrating this mystery, another trinity of action, they will succeed in greatly improving their vision as a photographer. The western mind has strayed from its transcendent roots and to that extent has our vision become tired and commonplace. True originality is derived when the attention of the artist turns to their origin, to their source. That is the only place they can renew their mind and rekindle passion so that their images convey something of essence, something meaningful and something that elicits within the soul of another the call to return to its home. To strive toward originality by intellectualizing the process and seeking to be different is futile. Their must be spontaniety and little or no mental chatter to break the flow of the process of photography. True photography neither seeks to emulate or to be different. You just do it. Food for thought!!

is the sun, or that part of the atmosphere that is almost incandescent with its diffused light. From this source of light on the right I see radiating lines (which I will not try to draw on a picture), some bouncing off the spires, some bouncing (wonderfully and warmly) off the rocks on the left, some bouncing off other unseen rocks and onto the underside of the arch and back to the camera.

 

That is, the "missing" or "absent" focal point of the composition is there, alright, just off the right end of the panel. Thus in a very real sense the "subject" of this picture is off to the right, just out of the field of view. It has to be out of the field of view to achieve its maximum impact, and to avoid blinding us, but it is still there, the true subject, the true focal point of the composition.

 

A picture of an audience raptly watching a play, taken from the side, would give a similar effect. The subject could be interpreted as the audience, but one could not ignore what one as viewer of the picture could not see, but what the persons in the audience can see all too well. They are captured by the actors on stage. The photographer, in capturing their rapt expressions, somehow manages to capture the actors who cannot be seen--not visually, but in the mind.

 

When the focal point of a composition is not visible, but is so powerful and central that it still draws attention to itself in spite of its invisibility, we can see it only reflexively. The mind, not the eye, recreates the subject just out of the field of view. It is still there as actor, like the understood (but unstated) subject of a sentence.

 

The subject or focal point is thus indeed the light, or, more precisely, the origin of the light that we can see directly as it bounces off the various elements of the composition. Even the shaded parts (the small snow field, for example) serve to draw attention to this implied subject.

 

We do not appreciate the light of the sun directly, by gazing into it. That would blind us. All that we can do, and all of the meaning that we can infer, comes from seeing indirectly what it is that the light does, but the source of the light still refuses to be ignored.

 

That is why it would not be good to crop off the "hot spot" on the right side of the photo. That would be like saying, "God does not exist. Look at the unfolding universe that God has creating and is creating."

 

The mind, not the eye, rejects such a contradiction, and thus such a crop.

Morey: Good, civilized defense of your picture, not once losing your temper. This fact alone raises the quality level of the image. I take my hat off to you.

As for myself, I'm not much into looking for artifacts in images or marking them up with arrows. Once you reach this stage of photographic criticism, I personally think that you're not really into photography anymore. That type of markup, also referred to as Redlining, is normally found in technical or CAD drawings, which is the realm of "picky people".

As for the image, yes, it has been photographed many times before, probably for a reason and that is because it is awe-inspiring. Also noted is that some of the criticizers have no idea of the magnitude and color of "Western Light" and its many variations. Keep up the excellent effort. BTW: About Copeland's music in one of the letters in this forum; his music DOES fit a lot of this scenery very well, and I had the phenomenal fortune to actually meet his teacher (Nadia Boulanger)in a very informal setting in Paris back in the sixties.

What is striking about this to me is that despite the complexity of forms and space, there is a nice smooth path for my eye to follow. The orange wedge is an obvious place to start, next my eye goes along the arch surface to the right, finding the distant mountains and that nice blue spot of snow and then to the foreground details on the left. I've shot quite a bit in terain like this and it is always so difficult to represent such an amassment of form in a graceful manner. Excellent.

Great image with a fantastic light.

Excellent variation of one of the most photographed motives on the planet. Makes me wish I had a panoramic camera.

Colors and framing with leaving open space on the right side together with the fading rocks give a good sense of the wideness.

 

Stefan

I honestly have to say, this one leaves me breathless. Please let me know if you will sell this one in poster size.

Kevin

kevindriscoll4570@hotmail.com

 

Great Photo! I love this area of the country. The only thing is I am pretty sure this picture is from Canyonlands National Park not Arches.

Michael Ferrante is correct. Regardless, this is an exceptional photo.

i have to wonder if this picture was inspired by some of John Shaw's work? this picture is readily available in at least one of his books. there isnt a whole lot of variation. i half expected to see his name under it at first

John

 

If you click above on read discussion, you will find considerable debate about originality and so on. I am not familiar with Shaw's version of this, however, there are probably thousands beside Shaw that have shot the arch. I do know that Shaw shoots in 35mm and this shot in 6x17.

Regards.

Nice light and nice framing, even though I found myself scrolling right hoping to find something else... It has a bit a "bridge to nowhere" effect which made me feel a bit dizzy...

Not sure how old this shot is. But peter lik has an identical shot to this in his portfolio.

 

Shot with the exact same gear, hope you got in first, because he sells this shot for 50USD

 

http://www.peterlik.com/poster.asp?ID=WG299

 

http://www.peterlik.com

Very good , keep up the good work