Artenay (Beauce)

...

Parfaite composition Gérard, superbe !!

I wish someone was standing on the right corner!

very graphic and nice picture.

Excellent composition!

Very well seen.

Interesting low angle. The lines build a dynamic diagonal composition

all your images are so wonderful that I would not known where to start commenting on them. you are great, talented photographer, it is an honor to be noticed by you.

Perfect composition !

composition geniale et vivante

Great composition ! I like the ideea very much.

Best regards, m

more than favourite!!!!

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I like the irony of emphasizing power lines, given how often we're inclined to clone them out, but the three vertical lines on the right seem to disappear as they approach the crown of the tree and then again as they approach the lower part of the trunk. Makes me wonder if they were added post capture for balance and to emphasize the message.

It is a good picture, but the messy tree and general mess on the right side of the photo force one to conclude that, in the final analysis, it doesn't quite work. The composition is pretty good, but flawed, and the element of simplicity in the attempt at minimalism is destroyed by the tree and associated clutter.

 

Many others in the portfolio are much better, in my opinion.

 

--Lannie

Hmmm, I can't see any of the problems those other two guys are seeing. Maybe I have a bad monitor, but the power lines look pretty consistent to me and all the trees are about as neat as trees get... there's no mess anywhere.

 

(I'll post my own impressions later in the week when I've had chance to contemplate the image.)

I am an admirer of Gerard's minimal art since I joined PN so it is very difficult for me to be really objective. Certainly it is not the best of his works but still it is a unique piece of art. As usually it is a striking image that engaged me at once. Dynamic lines create a complicated pattern but thanks to the prominent perspective we can feel the distance as if we stood there. We could discuss possible alternative compositions, crops and so on but I am not sure if it makes sense. There are some things that I'd rather not see in this image (especially in the top right and bottom left corner) but they do not distract me much, maybe these "imperfections" are in fact necessary as without them one could find this image somewhat sterile.

Overall I like it, especially the contrast between the power lines and the trees. And I like the idea of the composition. A couple of things bother me, though. I find the bright spot (I guess it is the sun behind the fog) just above the tree to be a distraction, especially since it makes the power lines fade out. Also, the lines crossing the upper right corner to some extent act as a balance to the content in the lower left, but I find these lines to be more of a distraction, and pulling my eye out of the image instead of acting as a boundary to keep my eye within the image.

Gerard, congrats on your third POW. That's got to be a record I guess.

 

Not one of my favorite images I've seen from you and I love most of your images. I guess you were trying to merge the natural world and the mechanical world but it just leaves me flat.

Gerard, I too have looked at your other remarkable work and find this particular one wanting. The loss or weakness of some of the wires in places yet they are strong farther on indicates some technical difficulty your are having with such slender parts of the image. I do like your composition, but believe a smidgen could be cropped off the left edge to rid us of the toppling power line support in the extreme lower left corner. The others lean as well, but not to this extreme. I believe the picture is clever and well balanced but is technically flawed with the weakness of some of the wires and the leaning towers.

 

Willie the Cropper

Gerard's photos have a beautiful simplicity, which to me is a valuable quality in a photograph. In this photo, however, the power lines do nothing to help draw my eye or organize the photo, as the line of trees already does that. Instead, the power lines add clutter. Maybe there are just too many of them, or the crossing of the power lines at the upper right is too distracting. It's an interesting idea, but in the end it doesn't work for me.

Maybe I can see why there was so much space left up there--it creates the appearance of lifting up the large tree on the right. The smaller tree on the right hides behind the larger--hiding from the lines. It's an interesting concept.

 

I think Erik is right--the top right is too distracting. There seems to be too much space there. Although it becomes more simplistic, I think cropping the top off strengthens the graphical content and provides a main subject (large tree on the right). It also removes the distracting joints in the wires along the lower right edge. Some of the theme is lost, perhaps, but it is a more graceful appearance.

To me, the composition works, albeit in a 'rule breaking' sort of way. I find my eye drawn to the vanishing point of the road and treeline, then to the top left. It then follows the power lines to the right until it catches the intersecting power lines, and from there, back to the vanishing point again, making a full circle. It then makes my eyes dance all over the image, then back to the top left to start all over again.

 

While not being postcard picturesque (i.e. with contrasty puffy clouds, etc.), it's a strong image...empty (overcast sky and bare trees) and full (no expanses of empty space) at the same time...Spartan, yet busy. Metaphorically, one could speculate at length about the juxtaposition of nature and technology. It's a great example of making lemonade from a lemon, given the usual banes of photographers: gray skies and power lines.

 

About the only thing I don't like is the relative brightness of the area above the foremost tree on the right. To me, it weakens the directional transition at the intersection of the power lines that my eye wants to follow.

 

THis image also makes a good case for film over digital in some situations, in that a digital image would be challenged to reproduce all those power lines as cleanly. 5/7

I have to agree with the peanut gallery on this one. The balance is off, which for this artist after viewing his portfolio, does not happen much. I looked at cropping options but nothing helped keep the eye in that I could find. Even tight did not work, and that usually fixes a lot of art. It's one, that if I were him, I would not have posted. Strength over quantity rules.

 

On thinking what I would have done differently, I'd probably of moved left and got the standard set of trees leading down both sides of the frame. Hard to beat the tried and true, and if it does not work walk. Would of been nice to get one of those dramatic skies he sometimes includes too.

Wonderful. This can only be in France. Carefully, precisely groomed trees under ugly (enhancing) power lines.

The overriding comment distilled from above seems to be ``I tried to improve it, but I can't...'' This says a lot for a photograph which succeeds in defiance of the rules.

 

The wires give the image a strange, oppressive, height; a ceiling that lets the mist in. The leaning pylons in the distance and the low vantage point serve to increase the height, while the apparent proximity of the trees produces a surreally scaled-down foreground, almost as if the trees were cowering away from the lines.

 

Perhaps the trees are playing a game of chicken, to see who can climb highest without being electrocuted. In the process the static is drawing the spindly branches out, forcing them to tease the wires into arcing current down through them. With the mist and the spiky balled tree crowns, conditions are just about perfect for it to happen...

 

I can't see how this picture could have been improved. It would have been a different picture with rolling clouds in it; for better or for worse, I don't know. But the more I think about it, the more I think the framing and the viewpoint are just right.

 

I liked the comment about the lemonade.