Blue Boat

critiques would be welcome

More is less. A wonderful serene shot. Great colours, best wishes William.

very quite!

Great composition and handling, a stand out photo.

Another beautiful composition Ron.....so serene.

Excellent mood and composition !! Congrats !!

Theodor D.

Wow! Wow! Wow!

Incredible subject matter and brilliant colour contrast!

Just a beautiful photo. Congratulations. Would look great on the wall!

HR

Great shot. Wonderful color and composition. Impossible to avoid clicking on it.

Modestly I would consider reducing  a bit of the sky, just enough to emphasize the boat.

Anyways count on my vote.

Oscar.

Really gorgeous shot. Don't have any criticisms to offer. I do wish I hadn't looked at Ron's portfolio, as I now want to just give up photography.

I love this image. The color of the boat is perfect and the perspective leads from the rope to the distant sunset. The reflections of the clouds and the shadow of the boat, all line up perfectly aiming toward the distant resolution. I like that the horizon dissects the image, giving the sky even weight with the boat and reflection. A horizon split other than 50-50 would not be as strong with this subject, IMO. Other than the boat, there's a softness that I enjoy, in contrast to sharp focus on the boat.

Sorry, but I don't have any suggested improvements.

The image feels like a Photoshop contrivance and a poorly executed one at that. The sharpness and hard contrast of the boat clash with the heavy Gaussian blur laid on top of the background. They feel like other worlds, other photos. The background also suffers from a lot of weird posterization from the pixels being pushed about too much. I assume the intention is to be soothing but I find it disjointed and jarring.

Taking your criticisms into consideration End, I can see where the boat does look somewhat out of place and disjointed. Perhaps a bit more softness on it would work better. And a little more texture in the water might work better as well. But overall, each time I glance at it, it appeals to me as is.

A neon-crayola oddity backed by a gauze-induced haze.

It's attractive, but is the boat really blue or has its hue been changed in post? It does look a bit fake (complete with blue rope?). This is clearly a matter of taste, but I find it a little too in the "Thomas Kinkade tradition" to work for me.

Ah, the blue rope is a problem for me also.

It is a pleasant dreamscape to my eye. The blue boat seems almost suspended above the water. I see it is a kind of fantasy landscape, which could be a background for winged creatures sailing in the mist. Not unpleasant because of the sunset glow. The boat is a very strong object. Is it almost too strong for the whole, that is something I am not sure of. I like simplicity. And I credit that in this image. It is striking. It does not jar me. Or seem contrived.

The overall effect is (to use Gerry's words) "Striking" and yes appealing to the eye. But it could be argued that there is something totally surreal about the image and therefore perhaps unnatural. My only suggestions would be for a more subtle colour for the boat and a little more definition at the horizon.

That is the effect one gets when pasting in an element from another image, poorly.

I'm not in any way against surrealism or fantasy. Many of Ron's images including some of the wildlife images are obviously digital manipulations, some are done very nicely, others like this one, not so much. Although it apparently does not bother others who have commented, I cannot get paste the banding and posterizing going on in the sky and water.

It's worth noting some of the differences in viewing experiences here, which I suspect will and should remain differences. The main difference I'm reminded of in this forum generally and on the critique pages as well is that "pleasant" and "appealing" photos are the cat's meow for some and not enough for others, such as me. That, I think, is a simple matter of taste and what we're each looking for in a photo.

Some things, though, seem a little more objective and worth nailing down in more concrete terms. So, my question is what exactly is pleasant or appealing about this photo, because I can usually recognize pleasantness and, even if I don't cotton to it, generally understand others' appreciation of it. Gerry says the boat is "almost too strong for the whole" and then goes on to say it doesn't jar him or seem contrived. And yet, the boat's being so strong and so unartfully colorized jars me a great deal and comes off to me as very contrived. The most striking part of the image is the most jarring. I don't mind jarring photos. As a matter of fact, I'm drawn to many jarring photos, but this is more a visual jar than an emotional jar and just feels like bad aesthetic choice to me.

I also very often like surrealism, though it is often overdone and somewhat trivial, IMO. There's a big difference, however, between fantasy and surrealism and I think the term "surreal" might get used inappropriately sometimes. Surrealism, for me, implies irrational juxtapositions that lead one into the world of the unconscious. This photo does not approach that kind of psychological universe for me. For it to be at all surreal, it would have to be more rather than less obvious. The boat's floating above the water would want not to appear as a mistake of photoshopping but rather as an impossible feat, and obviously so.

I don't know Fred. If I read you correctly, Fred, you are making this argument. - That everyone has her/his own taste, -That taste in photo art is inherently subjective and ultimately personal and hard upon which to sustain agreement. Yet, and you go on to justify your opinion in what you see as material ( I know I am putting words in your mouth ,) As you appraise the POTW, you see unmistakable flaws -that some here find to be not flaws- that kill the overall effect. For you. Fair enough in the spirit of discussion. But I will add a counterpoint, for sake of discussion if it helps.

 

My observation goes like this. In justifying, or amplifying your strong problems with the photo, seems you are deconstructing it in a way that favors/ supports you own subjective 'taste.' And dismissing the other tastes. I could be wrong as to intent, but that is how it comes across. I mean to say that you give a nod to taste and then go on to argue for your version of the elements of something you dislike. It still gets into the vagaries of terminology.

 

 

So what is my counterpoint. I can find things to enjoy in this image. Specifically it's simplicity,its mood. It's contrast of shapes against the sky, the colors of the sky. And it is the gestalt that I look for, which is another word and not one I use much...Simply stated, I care not at this point for the construction technicalities,the blueprints and the textural finishes that End of Days is bothered by. But I understand why some take that tack in looking. And again it is a taste that informs the interpretation and leads the mind in that case...get philosophical, but hey...

 

 

I have to question descriptive labels like 'overdone,' 'visual jar vs emotional jar,' 'bad aesthetic , ' ' trivial' (form of surrealism,) even though these words support personal taste and judgment. I disagree with each of them. Which does not mean it is perfect and beyond analysis. With pros and cons to take away..

 

I wish the boat had a more rooted place and that the color was not a little clash of palette with the overall. More muted as well as the line. Having said that I can still enjoy the overall. Does that make sense, not sure but it does to me. The horizon is fine enough. The little island suggests depth. I wish the water had more texture to look like some water motion and less like it is a flat calm. There is probably more we can fault or improve. A few ripples would help.

 

Then it would be an image taken by a committee. Now there is an idea:..-) -

gs

As I revisit the image, including 300%, the boat is almost believable. I see a part of the rope that is not blue and makes me think that someone might have actually painted a rope blue. This color of boat reminds me of many boats that I saw in the Greek Isles that were very close to this color. The bottom of the boat and gunnels show reasonable wear and differing color. At 300%, the boat does look like its floating above the water to me.

I can believe the boat color, I can believe the placid water, I can believe the haze in the BG, yet I accept this as a manipulated image. It doesn't bother me. If the boat were floating above the water, then that would bother me. The closer that I look at the boat coloring, it's believable, but the blue rope is a big question for me, yet there and inch or two at the end that's not colored.

I still like it a lot. Would I put a 50" version on my wall? Not before I saw a full resolution file and could resolve the issues about the construction of the image and how they'd look in a much larger format.

Gerry, I was going not just by my own taste, but by your own words about the boat being "almost too strong for the whole" yet not finding that jarring. I do understand all the other qualities you've now talked about that you like about the photo. I didn't understand how your own reaction to the boat wasn't at least a little jarring.

As to my distinction between something being emotionally jarring and visually jarring, the visually jarring feels like a mistake, it just doesn't make sense, like when someone clones out a shadow that any reasonable viewer would know should have been there. That can be done consistently with the vision of the photo to be surreal or something else or it can be done just to clean up a photo and make no sense relative to how the photo appears or acts. The emotionally jarring is often something that puts me out of my comfort zone and makes me think either a little deeper or a little differently.

I was thinking of bad aesthetic in terms of cloning something into a photo that might work if it appeared smoothly or organically but if the cloning is left too obvious, by streaks, leftover shadows of what was there before, flawed use of the clone tool, then that's a mistake which reads to me as an aesthetic negative.

Trivial forms of surrealism are overly simplistic adaptations of it and sometimes downright banal ones. By the way, I wasn't calling this photo an example of trivial surrealism at all. I thought I clearly said I didn't see it as surreal.

Finally, no, never completely subjective and never beyond disagreement. Our tastes are informed by culture, context, and many other things which are shared. Taste is as much communal as personal. I'm not going to argue with someone who is just looking for pleasantness from photos. It would seem pointless and it's a pretty basic matter of approach. But, in a critique discussion with peers, I don't mind going back and forth (let's not call it arguing) about what we see and how it works in a photo. How do we ever learn from each other or open our minds up to change if we isolate ourselves each according to taste? Our good friend Picasso is known to have said:

That's because taste can sometimes limit us from trying new things or adopting new perspectives. It can close us off to liking what we haven't previously liked. So, while there certainly is some element of the personal and subjective when it comes to taste, I would never say all matters of taste can't be argued. They can be and they should be among photographers and artists. I have had some of the best photographic and artistic experiences when I feel that my taste has been changed, often by someone who disagrees with my original judgment of something we're talking about. I think it's very much worth this kind of back and forth that you and I are having. No one wins. Or, should I say, we both win, because we get each others' insights.

Again, Gerry, I may see certain things as unmistakable flaws but the thing I brought up to you directly was something you, yourself, had already seen as flawed (the boat compared to the whole) and was just trying to nail down what you meant. Your reply goes a long way toward doing just that.

Someone in one of the forums actually described my personal taste on a work as "pedestrian." I laugh out loud. Yes. Guilty as charged. I do not look for too much mental and emotional fodder or pushing of boundaries. This one leaves a fresh clean taste. No script. And yet- it does not jar or stir my senses or tilt me off balance or make me think beyond the visual. Must it?

I can empathise with Fred's views of "Bad Aesthetics" The "Surreal" notion that I previously made reference to comes from my first impression of a dream like apparition, a crystal clear boat floating seemingly amidst a lake so still it almost appears like a cloud itself. Then comes the closer scrutiny and with it the feeling that some things are not quite right, reference "Bad Aesthetics" that can be seen as flaws in the image. In conclusion I think the concept and idea of the image was good, but if the effects were applied with a little more subtlety and care it may have rendered it more plausible and therefore much more aesthetically pleasing. As it is, it just doesn't make it.