Black Mount, Pink Dawn

Outstanding composition. Love the light on the all little frozen plant stalks. However I'm in the small minority of landscape photographers that is personally not a fan of landscape images which have more saturated color than one sees in nature. Either due to highly saturated films or Photoshop enhancements. In this case one might argue it is close enough to be narly believable even to this long timer thus a reasonable balance. Of course pink dawns are a beautiful landscape component which if enhanced nearly always looks better than reality. ...David

My attention was first caught by the colour in the background, and its reflection in the water. I haven't seen colours like that since I was a kid riding the bus to school on cold winter mornings. I'm always a fan of the duskier times of day for shooting because the colours that are present are so much more vibrant and alive, naturally. This is my own personal bias though, and highly influenced by growing up in the "land of living skies".

 

I would like to say that I do not find the photograph to be at all sterile or flat. As I inarticulately stated above, the colour is full of its own life, and the smaller details like the shape of the mountain (steep on the left, gradually decling right), the islands and the tree, and the details in the ice and water embraced by the grass - well, I saw a stark vitality that intrigued me and now I want to go see the lachan(sp?) in person someday.

What a magical place and how hauntingly the light has been captured. I really like the strong emphasis on the foreground but I find that the island with the tree on it fights for attention. This sets up a conflict which interferes with the otherwise serene nature of the image. You probably little option to avoid its inclusion other than by dynamite or digital jiggery pokery. It's a tremendous image none the less.

Realy nice view! I wish i made such a good photo like this one!

I was born and brought up near this location and this shot captures the colours and atmosphere perfectly. I know days like this very well. The lighting is perfect and the composition works just right for me. There is a lovely 'balance' to the image. Top marks. Lovely lovely image of a done-to-death scene (but not often done as superbly as this).

 

 

www.john-macpherson-photography.com

I like the original image. The use of the foreground has enhanced the beauty of the image and made this one POW.

One of the compositional issues in this photo, which pulls on our eyes, is diagonal lines. The foreground ice provides weight to the lower right side; I would expect it to be balanced with something of interest in the upper left. If it were, this would make a gentle dynamic diagonal line in the photo. Instead, the weight is in the upper right corner, which interferes with the diagonal flow. The upper left is very weak in comparison. And yet, there is no simple vertical line either; if there were a centered line drawing us straight in to the image, that might have worked as well.

 

So what would I change in taking it originally? I'd turn my body about 15 degrees to the right, to line up the ice and the background tree into a smooth line, and then check whether anything else was intruding on the photo. This would eliminate the tip of the island on the left, which wasn't adding much, and would focus more visual attention across the textured frozen grasses. It would also give the eye an escape from the clutches of the foreground ice. Hopefully, the result would be an easier flow from foreground to background, integrating both into a single image, with guiding lines helping the eyes.

A followup on my last comment - there are also some possibilities with a triangle composition (two significant elements in the background, and the point on the foreground ice/darkness). I think both a triangle composition and probably a diagonal composition would have worked, and the triangle might have been easier to find a suitable position for.

I like the composition very much but wondered about the color: what if the foreground ice were gray balanced? Personally, I like it somewhat better.

I guess I forgot to downsize the altered version before uploading, so it was bumped for being too large. Here it is again, smaller.

At first glance, I loved this picture because the foreground and background seemed to dance with each other. But after looking at it again, the two parts almost seem to be arguing, and competing for attention. The Picture gives the eyes plenty to look at, and the focus moves fairly smoothly around the shot. as a picture in a magazine or photo book, it works well, but if framed and hung on a wall it becomes angry. The sort of way that you feel happy to see relatives that have been gone for 3 or 4 years. But after they've been in your house as guests for a while, your ready for them to go back home.

 

Personally, I feel that if the foreground and background were cut from one another and framed in the same frame separated by an inch or so of matte. You could then be able to achieve a sense of harmony, but also some comfortable distance between the two.

 

As for the color, I think B&W would be better.. But that is just a matter of my preference, as I think it works either way....

Okay we'll downsize the suggestion so it actually appears...

ok one more time....

if it doesnt work this time, I give up :-)

Foregrounds, as has been said, can be the starting point or entrance into viewing an image, either conceptually as in a suggested subject (theme) or physically as in leading lines of some sort. The opposite, however, is also true; foreground elements can be the very subject matter of an image in which the background provides the necessary context. In this manner, the foreground is actually being "foregrounded," or given the most prominence. Some of the uneasiness with this photograph comes perhaps from a conflation between these two senses.

 

My eye starts and stops for a while as I consider the ice and frozen grasses, the quality of light being reflected, before finally moving on to the mountains. It is certainly a beautiful scene, but can there be more to it? The soft, warm, light stands in immediate contrast with this frozen environment, but ultimately it is the beauty of the scene that is dominant. This is not a bad thing, but raises the question: "Can representational landscapes (photographs in most cases) express anything, in terms of aesthetics, other than beauty? In art theory this ceased to be of much concern shortly after Plato; in short, art can be beautiful, but it's neither a necessary nor sufficient condition in terms of any kind of definition. Beauty, however, is still generally seen as the dominant aesthetic in representational landscape photography. I'm reminded of an article from Aperture:

"Given the lack of public skills in reading photographs, given that photographic content is sometimes buried in beauty, contemporary landscape photographers are often condemned to making pretty pictures. Dramatic clouds and sifting light can overwhelm more mundane information. Yet who can resist beautiful landscape pictures of one kind or another? Not I. The role of aestheticization is the thorniest issue within the already difficult process of communicating not only how a landscape looks, or seems, but how it is, and, most significantly, how it became that way.[..]"

Lucy R. Lippard from "Outside (but not necessarily beyond) the landscape," Aperture 150, 1998.

 

cheers,Aaron

Brian, I like the texture in this scene. I do think the scene would have better depth shot 645. However, the Nikkor 17-35 did very well. This shot would lose something for me if it were smoother and less dramatic. Galen Rowell-ish (yes). Filter ad(yes), but i like the job you did with the subject to still make it an original. 6.9

I like AC Tackett's idea.

As a new POW will take over from this one in the next day or so, may I firstly thank everyone who has contributed to the discussion during this week. Your input is much appreciated and it has been really interesting to have so many detailed and informative critiques on my image.

 

45 people have, so far, contributed to the forum, some several times. Of these, most have responded positively overall with varying degrees of enthusiasm. 7 contributors have been mainly negative in their comments. The two main topics have been composition and colour. 12 people have enthused about the colour of the image whilst 8 have specifically criticised it. The discussion on composition has been more equal with 13 people criticising it and suggesting changes and 14 reacting positively to it.

I think most of the comments have been fair and constructive. Only a couple got me a bit hot under the collar so either I am fairly thick skinned or you are (mostly) very diplomatic.

 

So what do I make of it all? Well, having read all the posts and examined all the suggested alterations the only changes I intend to make are to remove some of the greyness from the swirls of ice in the foreground and ease back very slightly on the overall colour. I accept that the composition may not be perfect but I haven't read any suggestions which I really think improve it. I believe the post of Aaron Falkenberg is extremely relevant in this regard.

 

As regards the colour, I liked it when I made the image and I like it now. I see the world in colour, not in monochrome which is why I have Velvia loaded in my camera instead of FP4. I suppose it would be a pretty boring world if we all thought alike!

 

Thanks once again to you all for what has been a most interesting forum.

Best regards,

Brian

I don't have much to say as they don't get much better than this.

A person couldn't ask for a better foreground. Wonderful photograph.

I see a smiling landscape - very alive, though frozen.