single photos The Haunted Wood

Your thoughts?

I'm in awe. Look at that texture and detail. With just the right splash of lighting. The twisting shapes. Damn.

You don't have any technical specifics on how you this? burning? dodging? f/stop? lens? exposure time? Spit it out. :)

What a great image. I love the detail, the tonal range & the tortured, twisted shapes. Magnificent!

G'day from near Tamworth - the other side of the continent.

James,

I made the image about 6 years ago and put the neg aside after failing miserably to emulate the contact print. I've recently scanned the neg, knowing that my photoshop skills now far surpass my darkroom skills. It was a simple matter of using the curves to achieve the same look that I could previously only (once) get from a contact print.

No specific burning or dodging (apart from toning down some of the edge highlights to keep interest within the image).

Some wild guesses on exposure details: 90mm lens (?) 30 seconds at f45 (I know the aperture would have been small to get the DoF) The image covers about 20 cm of wood and makes up about 3.5 inches of film area on the 5x4 sheet. I was about 30 - 40 cm from the wood when I shot the image.

All the details have been long forgotten, since this is one of my first LF images.

(G'day Ian. Let stalk Strine sometime!)

Cheers,

Graeme

Very beautiful, but the white frame distracts attention from the image and simplifies it.

Very interesting image. Am I the only one who sees a face in the upper left corner?

No, I can see it also. That is, if you are talking about the face which has its right eye directed towards the viewer.

I am particularly fond of pictures of wood, and I know from personal experience what a difficult subject it can be. What makes this particular image so successful is the gentle interplay of shadow and light. If the lighting had been completely uniform or if the contrasts had been much greater, the photo would have been less interesting.

It's nice to see an abstract image! I like that you've captured a full range. I can see why this was hard to print!

A true gem! An image found and interpreted with light, angle, composition and exposure.

Thanks for your rating , the defomation of the columns is given by the wide angle ( 50 mm Hasselblad ) and the only position to take this shot.

Your photos are stunning !! I appreciate the use of a large format camera , and The Haunted Wood have a particuliar charme , like a Minor White shot

nice on capturing the texture and twists. and thx for your comment too. my opinion is that (in a personal sense)anything that strikes the mind is a piece of art. what a pity the pic didn't appeal to you ;O

Gret photograph. B&W is perfectly suited to this particular subject. Lines and contours are depicted with a great exposure.

 

Also great to see a fellow Western Australian on photo.net!

Nice shot! Yes I could look at it for a good long while. It is a skilled photographer who can guide a viewer throughout their image. You have done that and I love this shot for that reason. Compositionally it's fantastic. Aesthetically, it's nice.

Apart from being a beautiful piece of photography the picture intrigues "to see things" (like the one face top left, but there are many others). It is condensed time (not only the 30 sec exposure and some hours of post-production work), and full of energy. You have the harsh contrast of light and absolute darkness, though the soft and gentle bends and turns. Nothing is for real or for ever, this picture is a great capture of eternity.

One of the greatest challenges in photography is photographing wood because so often photographs of wood are boring.

Congratulations on your POW appointment (and hang on).

 

This is one of the weirdest photographs I have ever seen.

I'm looking at this on my laptop with an attached monitor. The

latter draws attention to large dark areas with very little detail.

These areas are not evenly distributed throughout the picture

space and throw off the composition.

 

BUT . . . on my laptop, the shadow areas show quite a bit of

detail and change the balance of the picture completely. There's

a huge difference, and while I like the monitor version well

enough, the laptop view looks dramatically better.

Thank you Elves. I feel very honoured to have one of my images chosen as PoW. The next couple of weeks should be interesting, and I eagerly await the discussions.

Regards,

Graeme

 

. . . just changed the monitor contrast from 100 to 80 and

brightness from 80 to 100. Helps a bit.

I think all of the hours of work you put into this have been well-rewarded by this striking image, so full of fantasy and imagination. The title is entirely appropriate because a viewer can discern all sorts of grotesque and ghostly shapes in the wood.The image has an almost graphic appearance but it is still very much a photgraph, and one of the most intriguing I've seen in this slot. Congratulations on a well-deserved POW .

This photo is a real midtrap.

 

It is perfect example of how photographic abstraction can bend reality to create visions of the unreal out of something simple, pragmatic and normally uninteresting.

 

It is also a refreshing change amidst the countless lanscapes and flower shots that merely reproduce natural beauty failing to elevate it beyond the actual, the tangible, the own-eyes experience.

 

One can spend a great deal of time entwined in the visual vortex of this photo. And indeed, one can actually feel the slow but powerful force of time, shaping matter, casting forms that are complex and orderly all the same.

Congrats Graeme, a terrific abstraction with wirls and swirls to keep the eye wandering for a good long spell. Looks like it walked straight out of a Dr. Seuss book to me! (On my monitor the darker areas look just fine btw)

Great image! Nice to see some black and white large format work on the POW.

When I was a little kid, sometimes may parents would put me in my grandfather's bed for a nap. The headboard was somekind of dark stained gnarled wood, and I'd spend my time staring at it watching shapes of all kinds emerge, like staring at clouds. This photo takes me back there. Thanks.