Perdido Key Art

While catching the sunset, I came upon a dad teaching his son to fish.

I loved the sun creating the glowing silhouette around their bodies. I

cropped a bit from my original image. Click photo for large view. Thanks!

Perfect, it takes me there.  Speaking of there, we had other plans and couldn't go last weekend but hope to get one more trip in before football starts... Mike

John,  Excellent image with wonderful light and shadows.  Question:  Does the fishing person in the background detract from the father and son image you are featuring?  Should that person and his rods be cloned out?   Nice image!

Larry

I would experiment by making the background figures slightly less sharp and less contrasting... However, it looks perfect already

The light is magical John, don't change a thing. Beautiful.

BR, Holger

Drove by here today ;-)... Mike

Beautiful image of sunset; very nice reflection on the sand. Fantastic colors.

 

Continuing the theme of sunsets...A nice shot where the figures are used to help block out uncontrollable glare - always a good work around. In this case it is particularly good case as it also highlights the main subject of the shot. A heart warming theme of fatherhood (I assume), and companionship in a bit of fishing aids in the good feeling this shot engenders. The interesting sky also helps the shot. Is the horizon level? It might be that the sloping cloud base gives an optical illusion that it is isn't.

Robin, I confirmed that the horizon indeed is level just by holding a ruler immediately under the clouds. Actually, in my opinion, the impression to the contrary is given by the area of sunlight that appears the brightest under the clouds (toward the right side).

I find this image to be quite well done. As you've noted, it tells a universal story - about the father/child relationship. In this instance, it's made even more special by the environment, which John captured beautifully. I am impressed particularly by the detail in and along the shoreline, as highlighted by vivid sunlight.

I like this picture. Beyond the pretty sunset/sky is a well composed construct of the dominant foreground figures placed along the irregular yet leading lines of the shoreline. This adds great depth to the image and the rim lit subjects stand out sharply. I wish I could see a bit more of the child's fishing rod but the effect is still there.
The fact the child and man are obscured by shadow, adds power and focus to the underlining theme: the connection between a father and a son (assumed) in the time-honored bonding experience of learning to fish. This give the image a far greater appeal beyond an attractive, beach scene at sunset.

Beautiful shot, and I really like the glow around the father and son, but I'm a little bothered by how straight the cloud formation is. Might be perfectly natural, but it looks unnatural to me, and also looks like it is about to compress the man and then child. And it also makes the shot look like two different pictures (the cloud part and the human part).

I love what the lone figure in the background adds in terms of narrative and visual depth. The cloud line being a tangent to the man's head is a nice touch (so to speak). It establishes another sense of connection.

Superb.

Interesting colors and the cloud layers are a little unusual , flat layer called something cloud wise to weather scientists. Now, scratching head-If the sunset were to be the dominant subject and center of interest, perhaps if I were there I might have worked it so as to to get lower, make the silhouettes more stark, and stand out against the light..... I know, postmortems, postmortems. But so it is, we are invited to be Picture Pathologists, no slight to the originator.

 

I look at this and seek to probe it as a scenic and with people so more than a landscape. To fathom more about the surf fishing there; the youngster and the parent; the structures in the background are interesting but hard to guess. Not natural but if they are architectural are they sand barriers or what...

 

Would that retooling or composition diminish the intensity of the sunset the main player, Apollo riding his chariot in the evening sky and so on. Where would that leave us image wise.

 

Love sunsets. Sunrises too when the mood strikes...need to dwell on this one a few days. It is most pleasant. And not contrived. And no hidden subtexts. Good.

 

 

 

Interesting thought. I don't necessarily think one would be better than the other. Just different. To me, your shot from a lower angle would make it starker (as you say), perhaps more iconic, the figures a little more larger than life. A little more universalized perhaps. This way, it's a little more humble (just a description, not a value judgment). It's got a smaller-scale feel to it. Maybe a little more intimate, a little cozier. Yours might have more of a wow as compared to the current version which might be more understated and slower to reveal its charms.

 

Each could be great. Just very different feels to them. Personal choice. No right or wrong.

The ocean seems to be draining to the right. The horizon is tilted about 1 to 1 1/2 degrees. The buildings aren't plumb the same amount. I think the kid is holding a rod; it's hard to see so you wonder what they are doing. Colors are nice. I think its over sharpened. I would have cropped some off the bottom to "ground" the people more. Nice father-son shot but the scenery overwhelms the intimacy. The scenery competes with the portrait. Maybe a tighter crop around the people would add intimacy.

The ocean seems to be draining to the right. The horizon is tilted about 1 to 1 1/2 degrees. The buildings aren't plumb the same amount. I think the kid is holding a rod; it's hard to see so you wonder what they are doing. Colors are nice. I think its over sharpened. I would have cropped some off the bottom to "ground" the people more. Nice father-son shot but the scenery overwhelms the intimacy. The scenery competes with the portrait. Maybe a tighter crop around the people would add intimacy.

Overall, I love the mood and the intimate moment captured here, as well as the "On Golden Sea" light. However, there is a head sticking out of the man's back that I would get rid of--my eye keeps going there. And since I am not adverse to manipulating, I might even get rid of that T-shaped thing that is right of the main fishing rod. Nice one, though. Reminds me of my grandfather taking me fishing in Wyoming (despite the ocean!).

Leveling I could easily go with Alan. Though I liked seeing the shoreline and I would make it a i horizontal but not too much so. Your crop does concentrate down the ingredients and I am for that, because it had a whole lot in addition to sun and clouds. True, the T shaped gizmo adds nothing. Off with it. Whatever it is. But do not remove the other standing figure or the head. They add to the perspective. Now a questionable choice. Is it good or not so good to have the horizon plunk in the middle? I think in this case, maybe not. But we are not dogmatic about that compositional 'rule.'

The horizon line is so offset by the line of the clouds that, though the horizon may physically be centered it doesn't feel that way. That aspect of the composition works fine for me as does the rest of it. If the photo were to be made more horizontal in format, I'd shave as little as possible off the top and bottom to accomplish that. Intimacy can be set up in many different ways. And cropping away what might seem like extraneous space can, and in this case does, undermine the sense of intimacy. I think it's more intimate in the original form with all the dark space. The more shadow and darkness the better here, for me. Because it gives the light extra glow and the mind extra room to wander and makes me want to connect with the people in the shot even more. The darkness and space is like a blanket. It's a world. I'm invited to come into that world. The photo, for me, operates in great part through a sense of scale, man against landscape/ The relationship of the two main subjects, for me, is more effective because of their somewhat dwarfed relationship to their surroundings. By cropping, the scene becomes more easily accessible. In terms of intimacy, it's like the difference between someone greeting me at the door and someone waiting for me in their bedroom.

Although one could shave off some of the bottom so the horizon is not centered, this does strike me as doing something because that's what composition rules say you should do, rather than because it improves the shot. There are still nice reflections from the sand at the bottom of the image. I do agree that the aberrant head could be removed with benefit, but I take it as it is. Imperfection makes it real. As the image is square, I guess we can assume that the pic has already been cropped from a 2:3 or 4:3 original?

A square can be enveloping and inviting in a People in Nature photograph. This one achieves that. The more one looks the more one sees . Or just focuses on. It is inviting as Fred G commented. A viewer choice. I like it big or up close to cover my field of vision.

eXcellent sunset light and composition!

*7*
Looks GREAT! Well Done!

Hello everyone. First, I need to apologize for not replying sooner. I had to take an unexpected break for a couple of months. Thank you for all that took the time to comment on my photo and hope that some of you are still getting alerts on the discussion. A special thanks to Michael Linder for sending me a message in late September that I had won POTW. I don't remember receiving an email from P.Net about winning POTW, but I may of received it and deleted by mistake.

Thank you photo.net Elves for selecting this as POTW and a BIG thank you to guest judge Keri Friedman of Lensbaby for choosing the photo for the Grand Prize of the August's Water Photography Contest! Another thank you to Photo.net Editor Alison Duncan for surprising me with the news. I had been in a terrible slump, photography-wise and the grand prize really made my day. Due to my circumstances, I have not had a chance to try out the lens yet, but hope to be feeling well enough any day now.

As for the photo, I took about 2 dozen pics, using different exposures, mostly horizon, but a couple of verticals. I think this pose captured the father and son moment better then my other shots. I was trying to not intrude on them, so I was pointing camera in different directions, pretending to take pics of other things, while keeping an eye on them and setting my exposure. Every now and then they would have one of those special candid poses and I think this one worked pretty good. I can provide the gallery link if anyone wants to see the other pics and let me know if another image worked better, although this is the only image I have edited. After reading your comments, I agree about getting rid of the t-shape handle and the tiny head sticking out of the man's back. Being the eagle eye that I am, I did not even notice those two distractions until you folks pointed them out:) The fisherman in the background does not bother me. Alan, in your cropped/leveled version, it looks to me that the image is tilted slightly down to the left, but that is probably caused by looking at the clouds. As for the glowing sand in bottom of the image, I love the sun reflecting in the wet sand. For me it adds warmth to the overall mood.

Trying to insert original version before I cropped, but it is showing up as a link. Too tired to figure out why it is not posting image. If anyone is still around, feel free to weigh on the crop. It seemed to me that there was some wasted space, so the crop was needed, to zoom in more on the dad and son.