Day's End -- Harbor's Mouth (View 'Large' Please)**

View 'Large' Please for most pleasing effect. This tranquil scene

from yesterday is at Moss Landing -- Elk Horn Slough, one of the

U.S.'s least known wonders -- a haven for birds, seals, sea lions

and sea otters as well as an ocean port. Your ratings and critiques

are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very

critically, please submit a helpful and constructive comment/Please

share your superior knowledge to help improve my my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy! (I did . . .) John

This is my best folder for color photos and the question may be raised, in view of mediocre/low ratings, why did I post this photo in this folder instead of elsewhere.

The answer is that it's one of the finer photos I've taken. Period.

It's not one of my more popular 'people' photographs with which it competes, but this folder is not a 'people' folder.

It's about composition.

This photo, more than anything is about composition. It is very carefully composed with careful attention given to 'balance'.

The 'jetty' on which the birds rest, forms a narrow (oblique) triangle, which juts from the right. That serves in a way to 'unbalance' the photograph.

Counterbalancing that is the boat, above, which fills in the 'blank' space above the narrowest part (point) of the jetty, and it's done in the most interesting manner -- just look at the detail on the boat -- the swirls of color on the side of the boat.

For that and the detail of the bird guano (manure, sh*t, po*p) staining the rocks, which has a texture of its own, this photo has a lot of detail which makes viewing 'large', in my view, very rewarding.

It now is my plan to do a calendar, and this definitely will be on any calendar of California or Coastal California I make. It's that good in my mind. It's tranquil, but also something the eye can wander around and not just dismiss -- the eye actually can get lost examining the detail -- it gets better (in my mind) the more one observes it.

That's partly because (again in my mind) it's also about texture.

The water, ruffled a little by wind in the foreground, is ruffled more and is affected by swells and boat wakes in the center-top of the photo for different texture entirely, though the color remains about the same, tying the two together.

In essence if the eye follows the blue water, it can start either at bottom or top but it must follow a circuitous route to the opposite end of the photo, as the eye must go around the boat and the jetty point.

This is what an 'S' or 'C' curve forces the eye to do. This is not a standard 'S' or 'C' curve, but compositionally is not as simple as it may appear, even though the composition is relatively simple -- and it's very cohesive, tied together by the common element of water.

So, the textures are what break up the water which ties it together,, with the water having different surface textures from bottom to top, and the center is rich in detail (blow it up and observe if you doubt me, and if you don't like it, I'll live with your judgment.)

I think it's too easy to dismiss this photo because it's not 'stunning' or particularly 'novel' in its approach -- after all it's just a photo of a boat and rocks with birds on water.

But it's still one of the finest photos I've taken. Color makes it better (this is an sRGB view of an Adobe (1998) color gamut photo, with the gamut not adjusted, so the original is more striking. Posting has not helped this photo, but that is not something I'll whine about; it's fine as it is to me, and I post all my other photos this way.

I'm not begging for ratings; I have thousands of those, but so far I think this photo is misunderstood or I am simply myopic about my own capture and somehow I've fallen in love with a pig, mistaking it for a movie star.

Pig or movie star?

Or something in between.

I like it very much anyway.

John (Crosley)

Although this photo has an overall pleasing composition, a 'distant' or small look does not do it justice, because one cannnot see the tiny details that give it richness.

There are striations on all the rocks from streaking bird 'guano', for vertical stripes on each rick, plus changing colors on the rocks depending on their distance from the water and how often or much they are soaked by the rising and falling tides.

Further, each of the birds him(her)self is a 'character' of sorts -- these are mostly cormorants, I believe, a diving bird, and resting here, with a seagull atop the breakwater piling and to the right and beneath the piling, a group of seagulls -- and like the Epson printer advertisement, one seagull hidden among teh guano covered rocks -- can you spot him/her?

The cormorants, dressed mostly in black, have the look of marine undertakers, especially the leftmost one.

When viewed 'large' one also can better see the windblown pattern on the water, bottom, as well as the larger windblown pattern different direction/height/period) on the water, top, with the calmness at the breakwater (jetty).

Further, did you notice the small channel buoy, upper right?

The only better thing I could have hoped for was there were sea otters in front of the breakwater previously and one on the beach to the right, apparently having hauled himself out to die, apparently from old age (he was very grey (gray), and that's a certain sign of illness/impending death.)

People gathered around to look at him, and he barely could move away. But there were, in front of me, to my left if I turned left, more than 100 sea otters sunning themselves, in one of the largest populations of sea otters in the world -- completely protected and easily visible from bluffs overhead and easily singled out with a 400 mm lens or a 200 mm lens with a 2 power tele-extender, and sometimes only with a 200 mm lens, or less.

A 500 mm or a 1000 mirror lens, available cheaply (the 500 mm mirror lens at least) could easily take just the face/upper torso of the animals at times when they get close to shore which occurs often -- exposure adjustment is not hard for such manual lenses with a digital camera, even if they are not 'coupled' -- even for a D70 Nikon, if you're not in a hurry or if the exposure is not changing rapidly -- you're shooting a fixed exposure value subject, as I did shooting the Blue Angels and air show aircraft elsewhere in my folder.

I plan to return with my 1000 mm reflex (mirror) lens just for that purpose -- to take sea otter facial detail and hand/flipper detail as they sun, socialize and mock fight in late afternoon after a day of feasting on crab which wash in and out of this harbor/estuary with the ebb and flood of the tides.

Reflex lenses do have a problem in that the aperture is 'fixed' and thus one cannot play around with 'depth of field'. Also the 'circles of confusion' of out-of-focus areas tend to look like doughnuts -- a characteristic of such lenses -- a sure giveaway such a len's having been used.

John (Crosley)

John, If this were the muppet show you'd be Kermit. Sorry to say it, but this photo has no appeal for me, not even looking at in an abstract sense. I felt I had to tell you the truth (my truth).

I took a photo of some kids doing parkour today, it's the most recent one on my profile - I'd appreciate your candid commentary on it if you can spare it a moment. (Although I feel a bit brazen having just pissed on your bonfire)

So, you are not moved by the above. I still am, even though you may think it is Miss Piggy and I Kermit.

I haven't changed my opinion, to which I am entitled.

I think if you blew it up very large, you might have some appreciation for it that you can't get by computer viewing on PN.

Some photos show very well in thumbnail, and others show well blown up very large (including the one of yours -with appropriate manipulations I suggested- that you posted and also transformed to B&W if you feel proper), and I think this has enough detail and enough coverage of the frame that one could 'get lost' in it.

I like looking at it; it 'feels' tranquil to me, but not stupidly dull.

Maybe this is my substitute for marijuana (I don't indulge; I'm greatly allergic).

Kermit

aka

John (Crosley)

John,

Ultimately as long as we please ourselves with our work, then it has succeeded - yes?

Thanks again for commenting on my pic.

Ben

With good results, I note.

John (Crosley)

Today, Easter, I have uploaded a reworked edition of this photo, which I found on my hard drive during a routine review. It has been darkened slightly, the contrast enhanced slightly, certain elements 'sharpened' ever so slightly, including the topmost bird and the sitting boatman, and it is now more show-worthy. The color of the water has changed from a more dingy/washed out blue to a more saturated blue, which is not quite like I experience the blue of these waters, but my eyes also are not Polaroid either, so one can only guess at their true colors . . . some see them as more 'green' as they are loaded with nutrients.

One girlfriend, now slightly long ago, thought the 'foaminess' of Pacific waters was a sign of pollution . . . after every wave, foam would persist on the waters for some time, and she was sure that was a sign the earth's end was in sight.

In reality, that was a sign of nutrients in these very rich waters . . . something you don't see in tropical waters generally. Moss Landing sits off one of the great subterranean canyons of the world and associated upwelling of nutrients -- a subterranean canyon several time deeper (if it were on land) than the Grand Canyon is deep.

It is where from an ancient river, all the waters from West of the North American Continent middle latitudes emptied into the Pacific Ocean, which then was considerably less deep, or the land mass has risen commensurately (or both).

Look at a 'marine map' to appreciate just how deep that subterranean canyon is; it's located just off Monterey, California at the Southern end of Monterey Bay, California in the Pacific Ocean.

In fact, I think one would be justified in calling it a 'trench' unless that signifies a certain 'shape' instead of depth, just as one is familiar with the name Marianas 'Trench'.

Look, and you'll be amazed, or at least a little interested, I think.

John (Crosley)