Planet Earth?..

Great image!   composition and colors area very appealing; the scale is difficult to assess,  giving the scene an enigmatic character...the title you've given it is maximizing this very fact.

This is one of those photos, where a great image compliments itself with the title, the result being much more than the sum of its parts.

Congratulations on a fantastic, landscape!

Exceptional landscape! An outstanding play of light and shadows, the composition appropriately relates to the title. Congratulations, Edmondo.

PDE

interesting

Wow, great forms and shapes, created largely by light.  No scale, no context, just shapes -- nicely done.

I am captivated by your composition and use of extreme lighting Edmondo! I feel like the image is tilting right because of the horizon lines. The sliver of light along the first ridge is excellent. Also, what looks like bails of hay along the ground provide the not so evident scale. Perhaps this is only slightly over-sharpened. At the Larger view, there seems to be some white pixels in the dark ridge that could be cloned. Most of my observations are minor. Your image is full of interest and I think it is stunning!!

Please note the following:

• This image has been selected for discussion. It is not necessarily the "best" picture the Elves have seen this week, nor is it a contest.
• Discussion of photo.net policy, including the choice of Photograph of the Week should not take place here, but in the Help & Questions Forum.
• The About Photograph of the Week page tells you more about this feature of photo.net.
• Before writing a contribution to this thread, please consider our reason for having this forum: to help people learn about photography. Visitors have browsed the gallery, found a few striking images and want to know things like why is it a good picture, why does it work? Or, indeed, why doesn't it work, or how could it be improved? Try to answer such questions with your contribution.

Amazing! What is this?

Bellissima

Edmondo, c'est une image magnifique. La composition distribue les aplats de manière parfaite. La lumière est superbement traitée. Voilà un paysage d'une rare beauté.

Nice even i find there there is too much dark and this empty space in it. Also the contrast is too much and makes the entire image very static instead of playing with shadows.

Dark areas may mean a lot to the photographer, but for me not more than vague areas. Exclusion of these areas of the photo, I find the lighting, details and the colors of the image are very beautiful specially this groove with grass in the front .

This shot is a good choice for POW.The tones are very nice and fabulous.Nice view and nice atmosphere.I can have a strange feeling inside when see this capture!I really like the rakes on the earth and the details on it.
Best regards(Bobby).

Very powerful image of great lighting, been so selective with what should be included in the frame work is another credit adding to the composition of this image.

May be slightly more details at the shaded zones would have given more interest, other wise this is a highly skilled work.

It's interesting, but does little for me. That large dark area at right reminds me of a finger accidently in front of the lens, though of course it's not

I spent some very enjoyable time looking through Edmondo's portfolio yesterday and I will certainly return to explore further. His pages contain a number of unique photos, many of which would make terrific fodder for discussion, I would not include the image above amongst those. I am left wondering if the elves even looked at the rest of Edmondo's portfolio before deciding on something as ordinary as another Tuscan landscape.
I would encourage anyone visiting this page to explore Edmondo's portfolio and I congratulate him on a fascinating body of work.

I have been following Edmondo's work and although I think this is very good, I agree with Gordon that this photo would not have been my first choice from his portfolio for POTW. I also encourage others to visit his portfolio. As for this photo, the low angle of the light is very effective in defining the contours but the large dark areas on the right and top are a slight distraction for me. It does give a sense of mystery, but more detail would help provide the space needed in this photo. It seems too confined by the dark areas.

Photo graph drawing with light.Wonderful mastery of light-light and shadows

Sometimes a phenomenon can happen where an image will have some appeal at one size and yet not at others. That is what I feel about this image, where seeing the thumbnail, I was hopeful but when opening to the full size, it sort of fell apart for me.

The elements within the shot are very nice. The low light, the contrasting colors, the textures and the basic land features of the shot are all very nice and each can deliver a certain amount of interest I suppose. But overall, I feel the image does suffer a bit in how it was put together, the composition, which doesn't seem to allow for all these wonderful things to actually work together. I am not opposed to the large dark areas in the image but I don't find anything to balance them or to inform them or that anyway complement them. The image also lacks any sort of rhythm or purposeful lines (the diagonals go nowhere) and ends up feeling more documentary than expressive and yet fights to be more by its presentation. (Actually, there were two others in the portfolio that appear to have been shot in this same place and both seem a bit more fluid to me.)

One of the things that I did notice about this one is what feels like an extreme amount optical compression for the lens and camera used. In fact, the compression is significantly more noticeable than in another that indicates the use of a longer focal length(should I be assuming these details are accurate?). Although we know that Edmundo regularly crops, and must assume he shoots with that in mind, this one does make me wonder if it was a "save" cropping and thus is a bit less elegant than something that might have been seen at the time of exposure. I could be wrong about this, but knowing there are longer lenses available and the amount of compression here just leads me to wonder in this vein.

I do think that Edmundo has many nice images but if I were to suggest any area of overall improvement, I did feel that there was a bit more of a struggle organizing landscape (not that there aren't some nice ones) where the street work seemed very solid as a group.

This is a great image, but please check out the signore's whole Landscape portfolio. There are images there that are this one's equal and many that are even better. I am SO impressed. I think Signore Senatore's Landscape portfolio is the best collection of images I've seen on this site. Complimenti!

Many compliments for doing this wonderful picture!

By Toscana

I'm not bothered at all by the large dark area. For some reason, I find the little sliver of light along the ridge is a sufficient balance. The light, textures and color are all enchanting and I simply say "well done". Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go check out the rest of the portfolio.

Fuck what's this! Elves on LSD?? Pure photography has come to an end i admit but PSing couldn't be going down more subtle than this. Greeetings, newhorn.

There is a lot to like about this image but in the end it feels a bit like a sugar hit. I found it striking at first but once the initial impact wears off it feels like all those beautiful features are fighting each other and have no room to breath. It is cramped and unbalanced as a landscape, in part because the high contrast presentation, and the optical compression eliminate subtlety and depth; in part because there is a lack of visual play. It doesn't work as an abstract because the deep shadows and bright highlights aren't balanced or complementary.
Quite often I see something striking and I take some photos of it but when I get home I find I have a nice record of the phenomenon that goes no further. They can work well in a casual slide show but I would be unlikely to hang them on my wall. I would put this image in that category.
Others have mentioned the tendency of the elves to select one of the weaker photos in any given portfolio for discussion. They seem to have done it again here. There so many wonderful photos of the Tuscan landscape on this site that I can only assume it is a conscious decision to constrain the POW discussions to narrow technical aspects of our art. I think it is a bit sad and undervalues the depth of talent and insight that this site could make available to photographers of every level.