Looking Into Another World: Crescent from Milford Knoll

Crescent Country Club is one of two very exclusive communities in theSalisbury area. From my front yard and the street I can look downinto it. I wonder if the residents there walk with angels, havecharmed lives, dwell with Truth, and otherwise number themselves amongthe blessed of the earth?

--Lannie

Nice! Would be interesting to take another shot under different lighting conditions - maybe early evening?

 

I DONT GET THE TITLE BUT IF YOU TAKE AWAY THE MONSTROSITY OF THE HOUSE IT IS QUITE A TRAQUILLE AND BEAUTIFUL GARDEN. TAKE CARE SAM

To be truthful, I'm more impressed with your front yard that what lies beyond.  I know what you mean about wondering if they know their journey in life is made easier as a result of their wealth or their illusion of wealth.  However, I would feel very blessed to simply spread a blanket upon the grass of your front yard and daydream as I gazed into the sky above. 

deb

Samme, I live in a very modest subdivision built in the 1950s which just happens to have a few vantage points over parts of a very exclusive country club that was built comparatively recently.

Deb, I cropped a telephoto shot made from my side of the street across portions of two neighbors' backyards.  There is considerable "compression" of the distances here because of the telephoto effect.  You are not seeing my yard here, but portions of the two backyards across the street.

There is, interestingly, another whole street with houses between the roses shown and the houses visible in this photo.  Two creeks (one to the right, out of the picture, another below the roses) have carved out Milford Knoll, which is thus quite high relative to the land immediately beneath it.  Other portions of the country club climb back up to about the same level of the North Carolina Piedmont Plateau as the ridge where this shot was made.

--Lannie

Lannie

I think your lens is quite powerful!

Still would like to lay on a blanket in that area near the flowers and just daydream a bit.  I wonder if the wealthy ever have simple daydreams or have all their dreams come true?   Something to think about I guess.

 

deb

Deb, it is not that the lens was so long as that 21 megapixels allowed me to get the telephoto effect another way: a massive crop.  The image shown here is only a small portion cropped from the center of the original file.

--Lannie

Samme, the whole point is that it looks "tranquille," as you say.  I wonder how much real tranquility there is in "status symbol land":

--Lannie

well dont get me wrong.luxury can be great and comforting its the excess that can become a burden. take care sam

Deb, the two lots that converge across the street can be seen from another angle directly in front of my house:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=8323674

If the roses had been in bloom at the time this picture was made, they would have been visible to the left of the red bush.

Since this was shot from a very different angle, one cannot see into the Crescent C.C. community, and one cannot tell that it is the same place.

The same goes for this house, directly across the street from mine, slightly downhill from the roses as well as the pine tree and red bush in the other two shots:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=12149410&size=lg

This shot was made slightly uphill from the roses and back toward my house a bit:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=8489908&size=lg

If there is a lesson to any of this, it is that the beauty is always right under our noses--as you well know.   There is typically some kind of worthy shot from where we find ourselves standing at a given time.  If we can be allowed to walk a hundred feet in any direction, there almost always is a shot to be captured or made.  (Discovery or creation?  Take your pick.)

It is amazing what one can find across the street, at the confluence of two lots.

--Lannie

(at first, i thought it was a Kate Bush ["Kashka from Bagdad"] song, but i should have known...)

We like to spy on the neighbors

...

Check out the view from the rooftop

They've got a horse and a big trampoline

Running and jumping till they drop

Down on the ground and rolling around....

"Green" from Picture Perfect Morning

in either case, quite a feminine picture, in the sense of Erik Erikson's theory of early stages of gender development.

at first i thought this would look better brighter, but it's better this way.  best, j

Gotta check out that song, Jamie!  Thank you for that one.

--Lannie

Here is one version:

Thanks, again, Jamie.  I hadn't heard that one.

By the way, I am convinced that the only safe way to do street photography is to shoot with a 24mm f/1.4 lens wide open with a full-frame sensor, to get the widest possible coverage.  That way one can capture the desired subject while appearing to shoot in a very different direction.

Less likely to get popped in the face that way. . . .

--Lannie

Actually, Jamie, the other version in the same folder has less contrast and does appear lighter.

--Lannie

Afraid to get popped in the face!  Humph!!  Don't you CARE about photography???

No No.  Still thoroughly a Yank myself, I'm afraid.  The North of England is notoriously tough, which I quite like.  A lot of pride here.

Glad you like the song.  Took forever for me to find it.  Kate-Bush interference.

My initial thought was that instead of balancing excessive darkness near and excessive brightness far, it would be better to let the distance go further out to accentuate it's mystery - obviously the point of the image for me.  The other version misses that, but perhaps a third version....

[sorry, as usual.] best, j

Jamie, are you suggesting a longer lens, a shorter one, or what?  If you are talking about where I shoot from, that is pretty much fixed.  I can barely see this neighborhood from my own yard, and from only one small spot at that.  The original file shows a much broader panorama, but most of it is unusable.  I might yet be able to get a usable somewhat wider crop, if that is what you are talking about.

As for mystery, yes, indeed, that is the whole point.  The first time I looked down and saw these huge houses below, they (to the naked eye) looked a bit like a fairy tale world.  In spite of my jibes about the "pleasant valley" syndrome,  etc., Crescent actually is quite pretty. People will find some basis for one-upmanship in any social setting, even the most humble.  There is, however, one absolutely horrid piece of architecture at Crescent: a "miniature" replica of the Vanderbilt mansion.  It is gauche in the extreme.  Big money certainly does not guarantee good taste.

Even so, I want to take more shots at Crescent, if possible, before all the trees grow up in certain areas, so that I can remember it as it is, with broad vistas looking across both large plots and and fairways.  It is fortunately not a gated community, so that one can drive into it without interference.

As golf courses go, I would say that it seems to be quite well-designed, esthetically speaking.  I don't know who designed it.  I have no idea how it plays.

-Lannie

This try was less tight but unfortunately shot at f/2.8, and so the depth of field is too shallow: the houses are badly out of focus.

This could only work, I think, if one were trying to show the McMansions as eyesores.

--Lannie

neither a different place nor a different lens, just letting the already hazy bit get brighter to make it more indistinct.  nice one.  hope to see more.  best, j

p.s.:  the more above wasn't more above yet when i posted the just above.  understand?  i think you're right.  blurry doesn't work.  j

Thanks, Jamie. I shall have to try it under varying lighting and weather conditions as well. Golden early morning light with a bit of fog comes to mind. . . . I think that I will do two things differently, now that it is clear that there is a shot here: (1) use a tripod, and (2) shoot RAW rather than large JPEG.

--Lannie

Always Shoot Raw!

Jamie, I know better, but I had no idea these shots were going to yield anything worth keeping.  Besides, RAW conversions to TIFFs on Canon's DPP are so time-consuming--and for hand-held shots?  On the other hand, why fool with the expense of the 5D II if one is going to shoot hand-held JPEGs?

--Lannie

Adobe Photoshop.  Oh well.  Doesn't your Photoshop CS4 raw converter work with the 5D2?  If it does, I would recommend that.  Even better, you could use Lightroom, which has a much improved, faster workflow, in my opinion.  I use the Apple equivalent, Aperture.  It doesn't store TIFs of your files, it only keeps RAWs and instructions for how to process them.  That makes it much easier to compare different ways of processing an image.  best, j

Well, Jamie, at least the price of storage has dropped precipitously since we started doing digital.  Huge RAW and TIFF files are no longer quite so oppressive to deal with.

--Lannie