alex marsaud

Very nice warm colours, but too much dead space to my taste. Good dead centre composition indeed. I played a little bit w/ it, and I have to say that a more rectangular format is kinda appealing to me. What do you think?

 

And yes very possible if not easy to take bad shots of gorgeous sunsets!!!!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we're either looking at cloud shadows nor at another montain's shape. It appears to me as the same montain with the snow that has melted down already...

 

Anyway, great black nuances. I don't quite like the clouds to be so low, but that's a personal taste. I would crop the tree out too...

Gorgeous colours. About the composition: you definitely could have aimed more towards the right (there seem to be another interesting cloud, plus there's dead space on the left), and upwards (uninteresting and distracting foreground, vs nice dark cloud fighting in colour and shape against the main cloud).

You have captured a precious moment!

Stephen, I agree that the image is rather flat. For me the scanner is just a way to have my pics stored on a computer, so I don't pay much attention to this process... It looks like I should after all!

 

Michael, maybe more real black or white would help the shot. I kinda like your version; to some point I obtained smthg quite like it but decided to stick more to the print and diminish the contrast a little as the fur of this pets is reflecting so much light...

 

Tony, in order to obtain this dark in the background, I spotted the meter not on the bears but rather on the bright water reflection.

BTW, I didn't know that their fur was acting as solar panels!

 

And Peter, I still can hear him everytime I look @ the pic ;)

 

Thanks all!

Very nice warm feel. I particularly like the foliage framing, but would lose the trunk of the right tree just to keep the branches.

Great warm colours, and interesting composition. Good job!

Great perspective indeed, and nice low level of shooting. Foreground a bit too dark to my taste (crop, lighten?). Your desire to subdue the harsh light of the sun is understandable, but doesn't look quite natural. Great pure sky. Nice repetitive features.

Once again, good job!

Nop; it would b 2 easy if it was the pigeon, wouldn't it?! I was talking about the city skyline, which make the transition between the lake and the sky. Seen better on the B&W version.

I love this one very much: fantastic colours, with suberb subtle highlights on the cliff, and the front stones. I only wish I could see more of the pinky / orangy clouds...

Cheers, Alex

Very nice photograph. I particularly like the foregroung that echoes the middle distance hills in shape and colour. Good B&W feel on the greens... Is it due to the early time of the picture taking? Maybe slightly underexposed? Keep posting, and welcome!

Cheers, Alex

Hey Kenneth, it sounds easy when you say it, but I never really used PS except 4 cropping and lighting adjustment. I tried it anyway (magnetic lasso), but I couldn't come up with a neat and precise enough selection of the flower that would allow me to put it on a new layer, work w/ it and put it back w/ the backgroung, without the whole thing appearing tampered with.

Can you enlighten me more?

Cheers, Alex

Definitely needs 2 b larger! Is the darker area @ the top of the pic a trunk of a tree? What about the one on the top right side? Not knowing what they are bothers me... I like the shadowy line that contrasts nicely with the brighter part of the pic. Love the water drops!

Gorgeous framing. U could have centered the building more in that frame. Distracting light ground. Sky too close in tones to the colour of the building. Maybe use a red filter to add a dramatic touch? Good eye!

The slight colouring on the clean version might come from an automatic saving under RGB, or maybe is it an anomally? I'm not too familiar with these terms anyway...

 

From what I remember, there might have been a distracting foreground just @ the bottom, which explains my tight crop. Plus I liked the fact that I could give a great deal of emphasis on the totally natural (more flowers) background. More stem would have been a plus I agree. But I kinda like the result. What I like less and less though is the dead centre positionning. With the stem cut off, I think it would look and work way better if the right part of the shot was totally cropped to the flower... to make the stem "plundge" into the bottom corner. Do you agree?

I cleaned out and slightly adjusted (more light and contrast) the original pic. Do you like it better?

I would have looked up slightly more, to show the "horizon", and to have a feel of continuous movement; or alternately cropped @ about where the dark horizontal line is on the left, and focus on the foreground.

 

Great rusty tones, so appropriate here! Did you leave the rocks in the foreground intentionally soft focus? I don't think it quite works here, for there seems to be no real focus.

 

Nice unusual perspective. Great timeless quality!

I like the echo the dark roots of the grass makes to the darker piece of wood. Yet, you could have tried to balance things out a little bit more by adding a couple of darker planks on the left side. General lack of focus it seems...

 

About the mood, I would go 4 sadness, solitude, fatigue, disappointment, desperation. Nicely conveyed! And nice looking-down-point-of-view approach adding to the "I feel sorry 4 u" dramatic tension.

Cheers, Alex

@ 1st, I didn't see anything in this shot that would make it stand out. I didn't particularly like it, if @ all. But then I was struck by the colours that you grabbed in the lower part of the pic: if it wasn't 4 the quite banal sky, the scene would look surreal to me, like a painting most probably. It might come from the dark green of the middle-distant trees, subtle reddish brown tones of the clearing, and above all the milky green of the hills in the background. On top of that, the dragonfly precariously posed on this nicely lit branch looks like it's completely immobile, which is highly unusual and sends unconventional signals to me. Last thing, I find the pole on the left 2 be much disturbing. Overall, very original!

Cheers, Alex

Thank u all 4 your comments. I agree that these 2 dark dots distract the eye. I don't quite remember what it was: the closer one must have been a buoy, and the distant one a sailing boat. Also, the pic does lack a great deal of focus and some more contrast wouldn't hurt as you pointed out Kenneth. I sharpened, slightly increased contrast, and cleaned out the original pic, plus here is a B&W version. IMO, the B&W also works, but the mood is very different. And Josef, you're rite about the harsh lite (it was around 1pm, and it was blinding me...). @ the time, I wouldn't play w/ shutter speed and aperture so I trusted the meter...

 

PS There's still one significant (@ least 4 me!) detail that nobody saw, which can help make more sense out of this shot... Who would be the 1st one to pin point it?!

 

As much as I love what you have captured here, the shot might be more powerful for a number of reasons: you should get rid of this distracting light spot on the bottom-left of the pic. Maybe consider cropping more tightly, thus giving more emphasis on the clouds. Also, why not use a red filter to add more depth to the faded grey of the clouds? C the attached pic to make sense out of what I suggested...

Cheers, Alex

I don't exactly know how to put it, but I'm shared bewtween two very different feelings when looking @ this pic: @ 1st sight, I like very much the tree foliage framing on the sides that kinda couterbalance and block the heavy forward movement imposed by the menacing clouds, and the far montains @ the bottom that finishes up the framing by naturally linking both sides.

On the other hand, though, I feel like the trees are overshadowing the sky a bit too much, thus not letting the radiant power of the pic fully dazzle. Maybe they are too close to the camera? Maybe a wider angle? Or a less tight crop on the sides to give more space to the clouds?

Cheers, Alex

Thanks 4 sharing your comment Jim. I'm always glad to receive criticism; and it's funny to see how people @ first interprete your pictures. Interesting! About the featureless water and sky, it was my intention to leave it that way, to make these two elements one. Actually it didn't even cross my mind to disturb this immobile moment! And no there were no particular eye-catchy things going on on the jetty. The picture is not very original, but I did not intend to create smthg radically different; I'm not even sure I could ;)

Terrific Shot! I can feel the silent exhaustion from hard work (great position of this old lady (?) slightly bended over with her head down, smoking the pipe), with the sun still burning hot, and @ the same time the momentum that will keep them working day after day.

You're right about the position of the wings, especially for the first crane... The second one works fine though. The sky is absolutely gorgeous, w/ this threatening reddish / orangey tone. Nicely done! Just a thought about the composition: Maybe missing some brighter yellows... so I would have cropped a bit more tightly the top of the pic thus leaving more light sky below the birds, so that the general sentiment left by the pic is brighter. Can you feel any shift in the mood?

Is the top-left shadow from your car? U might consider cropping it out...(c attachment). And I personally would have preferred to have a wider pic, with less importance given to the foreground, more like a panoramic shot.

Other than that, I love the bluyish tones, very mysterious. Overall, I like it, even if I feel it's a bit underexposed. Cheers,

Alex