Pole Field

I'm interested in hearing what others think of this photo. I took it

recently and think it's one of my best (I've only been shooting for a

few months). Thanks!

Great composition--the posts really give a strong sense of perspective.

This is a tremendous composition. I was immediately drawn to the symmetric regularity of the poles and the nestled asymmetry of the road. The S-shape pulls the eye; the horizon is placed 1/3 way down. There are background and foreground elements. Well done!

 

To be more critical: The bluish hue of the poles suggests digital over-manipulation. This composition may work better in B&W because it is somewhat abstract to begin with. The foreground is weak. There may be more interesting light at dawn or dusk.

The previous poster had a good idea, I think...I took a few seconds and did this just to see. Levels, gamma, etc. haven't been messed with too much. I think it's a great shot!

Your comments are greatly appreciated (yours too, Jeff and Tadd!), and your critical points are fantastically insightful (thanks!).

 

The blues on the poles may have been altered slightly when I moved the RGB levels endpoints inward a bit in PS, but not by much. Unfortunately, reality is irrelevant in comparison to perception - if it looks unreal, it might as well not be. :(

 

I shot this thinking color (I don't think in b/w, yet), and initially thought b/w in postprocess, but I eventually kept it in color because I thought it added another level.

 

The blues are so relaxing and works well with the foreground browns. Just as importantly, I thought the blue/brown-mixed poles worked as a color bridge between the blue sky and brown grass. Perhaps that's too complex? Does that concept not come across or does it take away from the other, stronger concepts? If it does, then I'll have to reconsider b&w again (using Tadd's example as a guideline).

 

Thanks, guys!

I much prefer the color version. There's not enough visual contrast without the color contrast. As for the bluish tints in the poles, you can as easily fix that in PS as you messed it up in the first place! Simply open up the non-adjusted original and pop into QuickMask mode by typing the letter "Q". Everything you paint will be in red and when you pop back out of QuickMask (by typing "Q" again), everything you painted will NOT be selected. So you paint the poles in QM mode, drop back out, then apply the changes you originally did. Voila. PS is a beautiful thing.

interesting contrast between the road and the straight-in-a-line posts. I like the photo...although i think the right side of the photo could have been cropped a wee bit more...

Thanks for the comments!

 

(In response to a comment by someone who later deleted his comment)

 

Yes, it is digital, and the images print out quite well at various sizes. Once you go beyond 8x10 or so, it depends greatly on the quality of the image and the camera, the subject matter, the post-processing, and the output device.

 

I bet you can gather enough interest to get a thread going on digital image output quality.

 

Regarding the crop comment (which I will do), do you all think the real problem is that there is too much space on the right or not enough space on the left?

I think the cropping is fine, The road leads the eye to the right, so I find it natural to have a little more space there. But Im also wondering what all those poles are doing!

The poles are for polecats to sit on. They only come out at night, so you can't see them. I like the B&W version by reason of contrast, although I would darken the sky in that case.