Black Mount, Pink Dawn

Sorry, it was Oliver M. who made the comments I was agreeing with.

Congrats on the PoW!

 

This shot begs for large format, in my opinion. I don't have any problem with the composition, but I desperately want to see those fine details and textures in the grasses, and the ice swirls. I don't know if that makes for a criticism with respect to the elves question, but it seems that foreground elements need to have great clarity in order to juxtapose the distant features, which tend to reduce themselves to form, shape and color.

Very nice light, of course. To me, the problem (and the distracting element) is the rather odd shape of the land (?) in the foreground--like a grasping thumb & index finger jutting out from the bottom corners. I think if this was cropped a little less closely (by backing up a step and angling the camera down just a bit, for instance), this wouldn't be an issue. Otherwise, a very pleasant picture to look at.

This is the best photo of the week I've seen in quite some time. I also can't remember the

last time I rated a photo 7/7. I love this, what else can I say? Brian thanks for sharing...

Great capture, great composition and color.

If I would face such a landscape I would wait for a light event to happen. In my vision the water should glow more. but that's me.

Congrats for a wonderful shot. 6/6

I agree with both Michael & Olivier, probably i failed to properly express my feelings. A too strong background sometimes takes too much prominence lessening the landscape visual impact. On the other hand, the complete missing of some kind of foreground reduces the sense of depth and flattens the image. When a picture contains both a prominent foreground and a really attractive background it is very likely that the image will have to be splitted to gain! In this case the pond is attractive enough to give depth to the image without lessening the landscape, but i do admit that this is not the best shot ever from this photographer. I am also happy that this picture was choosen as POW so that we can debate over it instead of a quite-to-perfection image that can only be admired!

 

cheers

giuseppe

I would like to see the whites a little whiter. I would crop out the very bottom of the foreground, leaving just the top half of the oval formation. This leaves two "arms" reaching into the image and removes the cluttery bits in the bottom corners as well as the geometric portion of the ice formation that does not fit with the rest of the image. Very nicely done!

Firstly, my sincere thanks to all who have taken the time to comment on this image and also to the Elves who selected it as POW. I feel very honoured to have my work placed alongside so many outstanding photographs.

The above comments are very interesting and I will try to respond to them as objectively as possible.

 

I agree that there could be more of a link between the foreground and background and I was concious of this when I released the shutter but the strength of each element compelled me to include them - decisions, decisions!! The problem is that both foreground and background are in danger of competing for attention and the middle ground is not as strong. To counteract this I adjusted the perspective of the bottom half of the image in photoshop which accounts for the somewhat squarer format than the usual 3:2 in 35mm.

I feel, however, that the middle ground is not devoid of interest and that the pink reflections on the frozen loch add some strength here.

 

I would normally have framed the shot tighter to the mountain tops but again I felt that the colour of the sky made more of its inclusion worthwhile.

 

The swirl in the foreground is of ice and it was not possible to include more of it in the shot without including some other undesireable elements.

 

Doug, I am interested in your comments about the use of large format and I would love to have tried this (don't have one unfortunately). I'm not sure, however, that in terms of resolution, a LF transparency scanned on a flatbed and then reduced to 100kb for posting would actually appear any better on this site apart from the benefits of perspective control. Would welcome your thoughts on this.

 

Thanks again for so many constructive comments. Much appreciated.

Best regards and a happy new year.

 

Brian

Cropped it and rubbed out the remaining grass(?) on the right. (and very slight levels.. sorry =))

Gives more importance to the tree I think..

http://img44.exs.cx/img44/4569/2990208-md.th.jpg

Oliver, no need to apologise. I think your suggestion is a good one and works well. Think I might even prefer it. Thanks for your helpful input.

 

John, I have tried your suggestion but not sure about the bottom right corner. It looks a bit odd. Agree about the whites, though the reflected light did have a lot of colour in it. What do you think?

small crop!

A combination of Oliver's composition and John's suggestion of whiter foreground.

Sorry, posted wrong version. Here is corrected one.

Third time lucky

I prefer the "THIRD TIME LUCKY" swirl version. It is a much more prominent foreground but helps the onlookers on having a startpoint.

Good one! The photograph is kind of strange in its own way...must be the early morning light. I certainly like the ice circle in the foreground. I think it is used effectively; and even though it becomes a second object of interest robbing attention from the background, which would normally be the point of interest, it nonetheless does so by in an excellent way. Part of the reason the foreground steals the show has to do with the weirdness of its abstract form and the hair like qualities of the grass on and around it. Another reason why it works so good is the relationship between both objects (ice and snow) and because of a third and more important player in all this (water). Here we have three of all possible forms of water stacked together neatly into a package (if we only had a little vapor rising into the air we would have the whole family portrait).

Very well done and deserving of POW. I wish it had a little more color in the sky and the reflection on the water to satisfy my taste and while I'm at it, why not?...a little less bluish tone throughout. I have my version good and ready to go but I'm going to hold off until a braver soul then I takes the first shot.

Brian, you're right. By the time the file was reduced to web resolution and size, the difference would have been negligible, if evident at all. The shot here is well seen, and well composed, just that when I noticed it was a product of 35 mm, my heart sank a wee bit.

 

Landscapes of this scale (distant views of huge mountains) want to be reproduced big, I feel. Had you focused on a few individual plants, I wouldn't have thought of the big picture.

 

The above is meant as a neutral comment. I'm certainly not dumping on you for camera choice. With life as fleeting as it is, you get all the credit for the shot by itself. Besides, 50 ASA should be enough for a sizeable enlargement.

I'm actually a little bothered by the tree against the mountain in the background, and all the croppings, which do a fair job of working with the whole effect of the swirl and all. Personally, I wonder Brian, if you considered two shots: One of the swirl of ice, the plants and the water, and a second shot of the mountain, tree and sky? Travel being as costly as it is, I would have considered this good economy, to net two shots from the same scene.

As much as I love landscapes, the whole wide angle/foreground to background/portrait orientation/excessive graduated neutral density look is getting, well, boring. An inflation in the number of ?I bought an expensive graduated ND set, and I am going to use and abuse it? type shots?

 

There are entire websites dedicated to the jenre (timecatcher, the magical landscape, etc.), and there are really, really well-executed examples of this jenre on these websites, and here on photo.net as well. Please do not get me wrong; I love looking at these shots, and respect these photographers? dedication and talent. I have given the whole thing various tries, but I am neither as good a photographer, nor as dedicated an amateur. I cannot even commit to anything more demanding than screw in graduated ND filters, which are pretty limited. But, that does not mean that I am not entitled to ?think? and criticize. My taste in photography is well ahead of my talent as an amateur photographer.

 

My question is, how long is it going to take us and these photographers to get tired of this jenre, which is MOST of the time a little more than pretty looking shots of absolute nothings executed with good technique? I refuse to accept a statement made above: ??To me, landscape photography itself tends to be "a genre of lesser originality in itself?? This simply is not true. What about actually interesting landscapes that do not require 4 stops of graduated filtration? What about ordinary landscapes photographed in fascinating weather conditions in natural light, mist, fog, etc? What about abstract landscapes? What about landscapes that are shot with smth. other than (extreme) wide angle lenses? What about telephoto landscapes that make highly original use of compression.

 

I mean, come on, the possibilities are almost endless. Let us not be stuck with the shots of ?pretty nothings? with excessive graduated filtration!

 

Finally I would like to point out that Brian?s POW is one of the more original examples of this jenre, and it has other things going for itself. I actually have a ?litmus test?, for my own personal taste obviously, to determine the level of originality in these shots: with a quick ?convert to greyscale? I re-examine these type of shots to see whether they hold my interest. This one does. Cheers.

I give it a top rating. I would give it a top top rating if shot in Astia. One can always

boost a scan of Astia but not quite this far. Too 'Velveeta' to echo another's comment.

But still, It IS an excellent image.

Bravo Brian!

 

Yes, a nice shot. I think someone mentioned that the foreground be cropped

a little to create the illusion of embracing the landscape. I like the idea.

Perhaps it might add soulfullness to the land.

Good work!

Happy New Year!

This is a fabulous image. I like the highly saturated color of the Velvia film. I wonder if use of a PC lens would get the background even sharper. Never the less, this is a 7/7!!

My first impression wasn't good about the picture. It was probably because of light and color. Than I read about why this was chosen as a photograph of the week and I must agree. The power of the image is in composition although I don't like the color and would prefer this picture more in greyscale.

Than I took a closer look at it and read all the postings above. The main problem is, as was mentioned above, the middle part of image. The viewers eyes should get slightly through it and reach the mountains in background to get the feeling about deepness. But there are some distracting elements as the tree or the island on the left (no one mentioned yet). Also the small islands in the middle hinder the light to reflect the image of mountains in the water. But this is no critisism, although the image is not perfect, there propably can't be better exposition in this place as this one.

Congratulations to POW and as an attachement I send this photo in tritone. The one in greyscale that was sent above seems to be a little more lighter and there's no distinctions between mountains and the sky.

 

Regards,

I find interesting, that a couple of people suggested to make 2 pictures from the present single frame, and that quite a few people feel the top and bottom part of this image are somehow "apart" from each other and competing for attention. I do not share this impression at all: my eye went smoothly from front to back, supported by the beautiful colors and frozen grass between front and back. I think, we must look at this picture and really ask whether this "double interest" actually disturbs the eye or not. There is no rule saying that a picture should have only ONE point of interest; at most, there would be a rule of "unity" and a rule of "focus", which, combined, suggest that an image should have only one leader ("point of focus" of our attention), and that all parts of the image should "gel together well". I think the grass, the perspective, and the colors do provide unity; and I think the primary focus of attention is the foreground. So it works, imo.

Robert also suggested somehow, that the tree in the background was too much of an eye-catcher... I feel it certainly is an eye-catcher, but I think that's good. As I tried to take away this tree, I felt that my eyes were no longer pulled to the back, and that the circulation within the frame had somehow been broken.

There's no need to take away the tree. It helps the whole composition but it should be more to the right, I think. But photographer will do nothing with it and this image is as good as can be.