david_senesac

I've shot landscapes for two dozen years. This is the first time I've done critiques on photo.net and will go down the landscape list just to see what kind of images people post here and how they are perceived. Long ago I lurked a bit but did comment because too much that people were positvie about grated against my own aesthetic sense.

 

This is the best of the 13 images I've critiqued this afternoon. First thing I like is the whole scene has been captured with an excellent exposure level. Areas both left and right in the background are a bit dimmer but each dim area retains nice character. The image sky background has a split left to right bilatteral symetry which is good. On the left is the bright sunlit part of the sky while on the right the sun is blocked at cloud level while still illuminating the higher blue sky elevations above. The snowy middle ground has a nice glow to it. I'm guessing this is the usual velvia red coming out which is often not in the actual experience. In any case the whole snowy plain is bathed in fine warm light providing a beautiful complement to the mottled painterly sky pattern. Their is something of a curvem maybe a iced over river at right middel ground which complements the brighter blue hole on the right side of the sky. By positioning the left boundary of that curve in line with center frame it enhances the scene's geometry. If this is a medium or larger format image, I'd guess the foreground might provide some nice texture one cannot see in such a web sized viewing image.

I've shot landscapes for two dozen years. This is the first time I've done critiques on photo.net and will go down the landscape list just to see what kind of images people post here and how they are perceived. Long ago I lurked a bit but did comment because too much that people were positvie about grated against my own aesthetic sense.

 

If in the first moments of looking at a picture, I find something which strikes me, it is a good sign there might be something to look at. This is the first image of five I've critiqued today that I find at all worthy. First there are no annoying shadows. The green grass and yellow hay has nice horizontal bands, each with their own quality of form. The hay bales make the picture by providing nice shadowing from the obvious low angle sun at the right. Sky color looks a bit wierdly cyan green probably because it is one of the saturated films haha. The barn too blends into the image nicely making for a more interesting image than if it were just fields. Nothing great here but nice and pleasant to look at.

I've shot landscapes for two dozen years. This is the first time I've done critiques on photo.net and will go down the landscape list just to see what kind of images people post here and how they are perceived. Long ago I lurked a bit but didn't posts comments because usual positvie comments about grated against my own aesthetic sense.

 

A much photographed spot done in usual velvia style early morning. I personally dislike shadows though such has become a popular style. Also am also usually not a fan of warm light on rock unless there special about it. Here you've at least captured the grainy granite texture which helps. The cloud gives the image a dynamic that is good but is blocky, blurred-like thus so so.

Outstanding composition. Love the light on the all little frozen plant stalks. However I'm in the small minority of landscape photographers that is personally not a fan of landscape images which have more saturated color than one sees in nature. Either due to highly saturated films or Photoshop enhancements. In this case one might argue it is close enough to be narly believable even to this long timer thus a reasonable balance. Of course pink dawns are a beautiful landscape component which if enhanced nearly always looks better than reality. ...David

I like the way the texture of sand ripples in different locations complement the fine curving shapes of the dunes. Was this the original unedited image? I shoot Provia also because it provides relatively natural unsaturated color versus other films. The sand appears to be relatively warm thus I'd expect it was taken maybe an hour after sunrise or an hour before sunset.

 

The triangle of another dune in the left corner skyline seems to have some kind of wide dark edge I would not expect in dunes. In any case I am glad to see a natural landscape image like this with an obvious geometric flaw because it makes it more believably real. Of course it would look better without the triangle. To remove the flaw would improve the image's aesthetic but destroy its integrity as a landscape. As in most landscapes, there is often no option to move one's tripod position to another spot which would remove some object without changing the other component's aesthetic forms.

 

As for the vignetting, yikes I hate such in my own images. The real scene did not have the darkening thus is unnatural. It was caused by equipment. Sometimes especially with wider lenses there is a natural variation in sky color that may mimic vignetting. However this looks like a filter issue. As for the ethics of removing it in Photoshop, my opinion is that you ought to without replacing all the rest of the sky. Replacing the sky is the lazy way but then you get a fake image. In other words adjust just the corners. The larger the original digital file the more difficult it is to remove vignetting in sky. Blue sky usually varies much more from frame location to frame location than one's eye notices. To fix web sized sky images is trivial. But when making files for larger fine art sized prints this work can be quite tedious. -David

Superb image and an enlightening reflection on attitudes of a sizeable audience on this forum. Generally my own attitude regarding saturation and alterations with natural landscape photographs is close to Scott Eaton's.

Here it is important to consider the type of image the photographer is creating. Note quite correctly Jaap informs the viewer of both film and manipulations. This is not a natural landscape except for the sky. Everything else was generally planted or built by man. That in itself makes it less important to me personally whether the photographer uses saturated film or Photoshop enhancements. If someone wants to set up a commercial shot, take social pictures, portraits, sports, urban landscapes etc, judgement of appropriateness ought to be minimal. Some critisms tend to ignore context, often injecting their own photographic viewpoints narrowly. Another point is given the newness of digital imaging to many photographers, there is a considerable lack of understanding on how powerful the tools are in the hands of experts. Fine art photographers of natural landscapes need to present an honest reputation regarding realness of images to their clients and the public. Thus other photographers with different orientations ought to understand that perspective.

 

Lets say someone takes a picture of say Mount Ranier, imports a brand new sky, adds the Moon, selectively saturates flowers, adds some hikers, a bird etc, and adjusting things to make an aesthetic image. Then if they publicly display or market the image without notation as some do then I have issue. There is a very real can of worms down there whether people choose to ignore such or not. -David