The open space II

Love it. Keep up the posts.

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simple, effective and clever. nice work.

It may be a great image, but for me this doesn't quite do anything. I love the distance that this image inspires, the tree in the background, is very sharp. But the image itself, seems uninspiring, almost flat. Sorry for the negative comment, but there are plenty of [better] images that have been posted lately.

It has a 'timeless' feeling and as such i think it's worth the coice.

Great photo.

the photographer indicates this was not manipulated. i'd enjoy learning how to capture the grass so clearly and the sky with such a blur without photoshopping it. Denis?

Nice tones, but nothing special about the image. The slanted horizon is a bit bothersome. With the square crop, it seems like someone wish they had a Hasselblad.

No debate about the quality or in this Week Forum. Will love to learn first, how can I make the lower object so clear-distinct and the sky with such a motion blur without the help of photoshop. Regds.

 

K.C.

Ok I assume that the photo is manipulated, the sky seems to be added and does not match the light.

I like the under part of the photo, house, tree, grass but not the blurried-filtered sky.

 

It will be interest to know the applied technique (if the photo is not manipulated).

Why would anyone proposing square formats ever wish to have a Hadssy, huh ? Are squares impossible to those using rectangular formats ? Hmmmmm...

 

As for the slanted horizon, you guys forgot: slanted houses, slanted clouds too. The magic of this photo, to me, is the uniform slant of all parts of the image combined with the converging lines all over the frame.

 

To me, this really is a fantastic photo.

 

As for the question about the blurry clouds... Long exposure would appear to cause the blur, while a small aperture would guarantee not to over-expose the sky, and the grass should be darker, but exposed. Then it's a matter of burning and dodging...

 

OR, if necessary - that is: if the contrast was originally too high between sky and grass -, the photographer could have used a filter on the sky. Actually, even the very unlikely exposure of the grass longer than the sky - using a black mask to cover the sky during part of the exposure - would solve this problem on-camera. And then there would be ways in a wet lab as well.

 

Conclusion: so many ways to achieve this without Photoshop. Why people would immediately think of PS post-production work on a picture like this is beyond me - although it sure is a sign of the times, too.

 

PS is not the only way to achieve something - understanding of light helps.

Impactful picture.

High quality of this work.

For those who "suspect" a PS manipulation, I can tell them that you can get such a blurred sky just using a long time exposure taking your picture during a lower light period of the day. Of course, you use a tripod and with some seconds of exposure you have a picture with everything static sharp and eveything moving blurred.

For the slight tilt of the horizon, the extra wide angle lense used explains a kind of distortion of the picture and this way the tiny bit of leaning to the right.

I guess, The only manipulation Denis did is a cropping of the picture because this is not the original size of the 20D sensor.For me it's a beautiful picture with full of good feelings like serenity, peace with the whole earth and overall a great sense of beauty.

Merci Denis Olivier.

"the sky seems to be added and does not match the light"

 

No. There's no lighting direction in the sky, since clouds are blurred. So there is no contradiction between the light in the sky and the one on the ground either. Besides that, with so much burning and dodging, we can almost say that the light was "reconstructed" to match the photographer's vision of this scene.

Hey Marc ! We wrote the same idea at the same time ! That's a great fun !

anf for me a great happiness to see YOU do have the same idea about this picture than me. Very proud......

Yes. Same idea indeed. The only thing I thought was worth adding is what happens in a case where the contrast between sky and clouds would be high. Though I agree with you, that this sort of pictures are best taken under low contrast conditions - cloudy weather is needed anyway.

 

I really love this kind of work - we had G. Laurenceau's POW picture as well in this genre, and another Frenchman with another POW a bit similar - his name escapes me rightnow -, but it's not a French thing, tho...:-)

 

It's a bit of a pity, imo, to see images like this immediately suspected of PS post-prod manipulations. Of course, it could be done using PS, but it could be done without PS as well.

Besides the square and the toned monochrome factors, the treatment of the sky and selective darkening of the corners to lead the viewer's eye is reminiscent of the work of Michael Kenna and Rolfe Horn. Not bad at all.

 

I don't see how the medium used to capture or technique used to create this image is relevant. And I say that as a diehard traditional b&w wet darkroom addict.

This is one where a first look impressed me, but (at least at this small size) the photo didn't go on to evoke strong emotions. It is a nice composition and my only gripe is the slight leaning of the house, which I guess is due to a wide angle lens being used. Regarding someone's earlier comment about the sky, I think it could be either a long exposure or Photoshop... the problem nowadays is that since image manipulation can make rarities/difficult exposures commonplace/easy, the rarities themselves have been robbed of their intrinsic value, so even if a photo's weird sky is real, it's not something uncommon to see 'in a picture'. I photographed one of those rare shafts of light through cloud over a building yesterday, and thought it looked cool both in reality and on the camera LCD. But when I looked at it later on the computer I was underwhelmed. It looked like a simple PS creation, and I could probably have got a better and ironically more realistic result by creating the whole thing in my PC. Perhaps nowadays it is vital to find compositions that simply couldn't be put together in an image manipulation program? Manipulated or not, this photo would have wowed me more in the days before PS made similar images fairly commonplace. Congrats on POW... well done for spotting and making the most of the opportunity, setting, and light.

Ok, I was watching the Denis other photos and he uses long exposure, and I made fool of myself, sorry Denis. Your work is really brilliant.

I think you have better photos than this one and you have a unique style to show us your views.

I see now how this can be done.

 

Stupid of me commenting your photo without seeing your previous work (and brilliant work) and I apologize a lot! (not my day today)

 

Sorry again

Rgds

By the way, Lex, did you check the perpendicularity in this one ? :-)

"this photo would have wowed me more in the days before PS made similar images fairly commonplace" - Ed S.

 

Yes. And that's exactly the problem with this image and many others in all kinds of genres. The bad thing that accidentally came with a great software. :-(

You said :

"we had G. Laurenceau's POW picture as well in this genre, and another Frenchman with another POW a bit similar - his name escapes me rightnow"

The photographer's name is

Jean-Philippe poli :

http://www.photo.net/photodb/member-photos?user_id=495879

And for those interested : a link to the Gerard Laurenceau portfolio :

http://www.photo.net/photodb/member-photos?include=all&user_id=785763

Great shot.. I love the flow of the picture!
Definately 7/7 =)
Regards,
-Amit

The sense of movement,the lack of...dust to dust.You have a good sense of compositional skills that are accentuated by your tonality that is missed so often here on PN.I do not get the feeling of tranquility here as much as I do the sense of the finite of man and his proneness of the things he creates to decay.I would like to point out that after the initial rush from the sky(no pun intended)I felt a little off balance stemming from the right side of the image..almost like the structure is squeezed in just a bit much.Maybe some minor cropping by the 'cropping society'could rectify this?Overall a powerful image Denis and deserving of more exposure...congrats.

I have to admit my failure to see anything special about this photo apart from its technical virtues.

I like this one because of the blurred clouds. It makes me feel like I'm standing still and time is flying by. Now that I think about it maybe that's not a good thing. Anyway, dof, contrast and composition are great imo. Amy H

The tonalities and contrast in the sky are nice, but I am soon distracted by the tilt of the buildings, mostly because both are leaning in the same direction, so it looks more like a framing issue that attempts to deal with a non-level horizon than an attempt to portray structural deterioration.

 

Here's what I suspect would be a more accurate framing (according to a bubble level). I also think I would would have moved to the right to reduce the space between the tree and the building which would also emphasize the open space around the group of three elements.