FACTORY Frimmersdorf II - Germany -

This is an interesting concept for an image. The old town church(?) tower contrasting against the new industry is engaging and the blurred smoke emphasizes the productive and polluting nature of the industry.

There are some technical flaws. The over-sharpening is concerning and distracting. The lights on the towers grab my attention away from the natural composition of the image. A soft glow would have been better in my opinion.

The inclusion of stars in the upper right might have seemed a nice way to get the viewer's attention back into the image. However, knowing how long an exposure this must have been to achieve the smoke/steam blurring, the stars only seem unnatural. This is unfortunate because the whole image now seems manufactured and, for me anyways, this undercuts its possible effectiveness on my as a viewer. The intensity of the toning also come into play in creating this impression.

Lastly, and unfortunately for this image, long-exposure night images of steam emerging from industry is a well explored theme. My mind is immediately taken to more evocative and successful work such as Kenna's Ratcliffe (and other power-station) images, or Denis Olivier's industrial images.

Jen, this photo is very impressive. The smoke provides a whimsical feel. It is nicely captured. The church steeple jumps out at me. Great work.

wonderful work, beatiful

Ignoring(well not quite) the pseudo-intellectuel guys who tell you what to appreciate and the Elves suffering from burnout, I find this a very original and tasteful nightimage. Is it to be a POW? I've seen things this week more to my taste, period.

Am I the only one having a hard time finding in this thread where anyone told other people what to appreciate? I reread everything and all I saw were clearly denoted opinions.

The path of the strobes from the two airplanes in the upper right corner adds an extra ounce of the same feeling I get from the rest of the picture. They look like they are going to meet in one point. Those who worry about stars lacking trails may now rest. I agree with the comment about the bright part to the right.

Gaute, I'm sure you'll be able to identify the stars by the power plant's location and approximate time of shoot using any number of available planetarium software.
<Link> - if I'm not mistaken.

A gorgeous photo - nice work.

I would have to agree that it's oversharpened and that at full size (at least as "photo.net" allows me) the stars are distracting - they look almost like "hot pixels".

These issues pale in contrast to the beauty of the image as a whole. Again, nice work.

A wonderful example of shooting with available darkness.

The blend of extreme sharp and soft is tremendously appealing.

Love the simplicity of this shot, excellent 7/7. Congrats!

Chang; thanks for the link. I still see two airplanes, and now guess they were heading for Cologne-Bonn airport. In my opinion it is a better photo with two airplanes than with five stars without trails in a constellation I do not recognize (being no expert). I may be mistaken, but airplanes was my first thought when I saw the picture, and for me that gave the picture an extra dimension. Visually they are not credible to me as stars. To me they are visually credible only as strobes on two airplanes.
I think that there is an interesting point in the divergence between us: If the light points in the upper right part only works for those who perceive them as strobes, and these are a tiny minority, should you then remove them in order to create a better picture for the large majority who are looking at stars? I would say yes, plane spotters like me would not miss what they did not see. I still would have found the picture very interesting and well executed.

Gaute, a reason to perhaps change the picture would be if the photographer himself thought that change better expressed what he wanted. No, he should absolutely not change it because it would make a better picture for the majority. But, if the majority opinion expressed made him see it differently and made him feel that the change suited the photo, then he should consider changing it. Very often, especially in terms of art, the majority is wrong. Artists and good photographers are often not part of that majority. American Idol, however, is!

Can't a good photographer be an artist? And if so, isn't that redundant Fred? But I suppose all good photographers might not be artists, just good picture makers.

John, I assume you're just being feisty. ;))) Yes, a good photographer can be an artist. But not all good photographers are.

Of course, this was not the point of my post, which was about popularity and photographs that might get made according to polls.

If the church was better illuminated it would be a shock. Now it's a beauty. Well done!

Does it bug me or enhance the effect. There are several things that stand out for me, 1) the softeness 2) the stars and 3) the embossing effect.
Since I notice them immediatly, then that tells me they don't work well ~ for me.

Absolutely brilliant! Fine art at it's finest.

Effing Brilliant! This is ART! Straight up! Love it!!!!

I don't like it because the lines are oversharpened and unnatural, clinical and almost an engineers drawing.
I like it because the lines are sharp and it look like an engineers drawing, with some nice hard angles..
I hope that makes sense. I guess I don't like unnatural things and certainly not overdone HDR, but I do like abstracts and architectural ideas and B&W night shots, and in that vein this is quite acceptable to me.

this has such a creepy edward scissor hands meets apocalypse feel... nice job!

Mr Bloggs......nothing you've contributed to photo.net since September 3, 2010 makes sense. Perhaps your camera is a few pixels short of a full frame?

Excellent!

This photo Speaks with lights proportioned perfectly...

one of the finest landscape i've ever seen, jens. love the composition and looooog exposure bringing out the mystic futuristic feel, little haunting, little suspense. stunning impact, outstanding all the way.

regards.