peggy_jones

the problem here is my eye travels up and out of the frame. by cropping down at least half of the sky above the highest rock then my eye gets riveted between the rocks and the livestock. also, the burning of the sky shows signs of such work. digital darkroom work should be subtle and not call attention to itself.

though I wanted to include the red reflected window frame edge (which might require some perspective correction?), but no matter...

 

okay, so now my mind's eye reaches to the reflected white lines or elevation levels (a triangle of 3 levels), gets pulled down by the red triangle, and loops back again (to the lower left level)! a more compelling composition to guide the eye to study the 3-D depth to this architectural study of building lines, forms, and colors! much better this than merely leading the eye altogether predictably, rhythmically but boringly, out of the frame.

"... you've...considered a square crop, but if you put a card up on your screen to block out the right side, I think you'll see that the red triangle that now sits right on the edge draws the eye and pulls you right out of the frame, as is the case with all bright contrasty elements that sit too close to the edge."

 

I did just that when I suggested the square crop (and not for its squareness, but because it coincidently works better) and my MIND'S EYE was NOT pulled out of the frame. you seem to get caught up in allowing common-denominator aesthetic rules govern your decisions. these axioms work more often than not and for good reasons, but the TRAINED EYE has to determine when they do and when they don't in each and every instance. and following your logic, the red elongated diamond of the full-framed version pulls my eye out even more and my eye fails to want to return because the image has dissipated into a rather boring abstraction. but with the squarer crop, my MIND'S EYE reads this as a well considered architectural reflection study and does not get distracted by a single triangular element on the righthand edge, but rather that element helps provide firmness of structural visual support. either way this is a very nice image, but to me the squarer crop is a more intelligent and interesting one.

 

 

"Peggy, thanks for your analysis. Before I offer mine may I ask you to check out my previous unaltered upload for comparision."

no doubt to me that your unaltered version is aesthetcally inferior to the "gallows-2(curves)" of this thread. the colors and tones of the latter are cleaner and more pleasing. however, my critique goes to the composition and cropping which I think stands up better having a more impressive and impressionist architectural emphasis rather than as a blander and more predictable (er, "ho-hum", so what?) semi-abstract.

you need to re-upload a copy of this interesting image so that the short dimension is at least 267 pixels. this way the thumbnail won't take up so much space here and in the gallery.

club comps have always been craps shoots, but I can see how this was jettisoned by a less than lenient judge, especially one of the "it's all or nothing" persuasion. to me, this is compositionally static as a horizontal with the nearly repetitive (red) and continuing (blue) areas on the right, as opposed to the far more interesting patterns on the left. (yep, an "echo" can aesthetically "hurt" an image if it's less interesting than what it echoes). a square crop (up to and including the first red triangle on the right) would have made this a far more dynamic, tense, and interesting image!

you should know that a score south of 4 for originality probably means that the rater simply disliked what you did here. what that was, who knows? to me, "bad" originality is to make choices that essentially ruin what could have been done better -- which I don't feel is the case, here. (many consider 4 to mean average, run-of-the-mill, or "no" originality... so, the one score of O=4 is more puzzling than the one for O=3).

 

that said, this orthographic (?) style image is simple and elegant in its treatment of the contrast of urbane architecture and nature.

hmmm. women figureheads behind men-in-suits on distant planets, too? original if the roles were reversed. even more original if the figures resembled real persons rather than idealized forms that industries (doll producers, too) have us brainwashed twits trained to worship.

"The horses heads had been past the point where this picture was taken, this was as the start vehicle pulled away to start the race. I just managed to get it right..."

then why is the shadow of yourself and the start vehicle not clearly visible? your camera position is quite close (as you indicate, and by the wide angle perspective) and the sulky's shadow is quite long (yours would be, too). okay, if dust blown up by the vehicle obscures your shadow, then why does it not obscure other details, like the horses' hooves? cmon, fess up.

looks like you captured the moment of celebratory triumph, perhaps of a boat race or the end of a ritual fasting period?

marvelous in every way!

the upper part of the sky has an artificial looking quality to it, and the nearly uniformly dark bottom also detracts. crop these out and this otherwise overworked-looking image takes on a visually cleaner impact and dramatic rhythm. that is, simplify the photo by cropping up half way from the bottom edge (50%) toward the first brightly visible paving stone seam, and crop out all (100%) of the very busy, darkish sky clouds. now, with a figure sitting on the ledge next to the rail even a Wyeth would be proud.

tonality and essential composition are wonderful. however, there are aspects of the top and right portions of the image that I find somewhat bothersome. for one thing, the left side, except for the geometrically pleasing but otherwise distracting desk by the window, appears completely clean of clutter and reflectivity (by the top), but not so the right side.

 

second, the two figures are stacked together on the right. not a huge problem per se, but the lower figure (and her shadow) is visually cramped by the stairs and landing. similarly, the hung artwork on that side gets merged. seems that a slight shift in camera position would have tweaked the separation of these elements better. true, one cannot control the simultaneous position of the transient human figures, but the merging of the artwork with the landing should be controllable (except if maneuvering room was itself limited).

 

finally, there's a lot of reflective business above and surrounding the central figure atop the steps, and he gets a bit lost in it. my attention gets drawn more to his feet, then the landing, then the cramped figure and art, etc. could a polarizer have alleviated this somewhat? so, while as a whole the photo is visually aesthetic in the general sense, there are a number of annoying mind's-eye issues with how well the various parts mesh together.

I have no problem with her position in the frame. however, her pose and expression is stiff and contrived. her costume tells me nothing (except that lighting is poor near her feet). so why not move in or frame her closer? (and if you did in other shots, well good for those, not for this).

this is very nicely toned and captured. but a relatively square frame would work better. just crop in close to the surf at left, crop out the two figures at right and one at bottom for a cleaner composition.

mostly, this is a "pretty" collage

very good pictures on the left and right, but here my interest is divided.

this one works: stage lighting and the star performer hits her high note. you can even see her teeth. what's refreshing is that this works photographically without help of a lead-the-viewer caption or overworked explanation. but you already knew that.

the composite is reasonably aesthetic, but the connection of the elements presented, and the image of the mythological character of the saga, is on the whole a non sequitor. saying it is so doesn't make it so.

 

the softness appears due to the focus point being in front of the polar bear cub, especially tack-sharp on the line of snow highlights several feet in front of its paws. cropping about 10% of the left would heighten impact.

love the compositional design of this image, especially the way the lines of the two elements harmonize linearly on the left and then cross each other on the right. the reflector and the main tower balance each other, too. now, did you get a chance to photograph inside the cathedral?

you know, I am so glad that this discussion has drolled on about picking all the wrong nits. the photo is criticized for the vertical flip, for the tilt, and then for not flipping it horizontally so that it "reads" left to right as to the subject's motion. well, speaking of being imprisoned by rules, and not seeing the forest for the trees...

well, HELLOOOOOOOO... guess what. Marcio has trumped all of you! Marcio recognized quite obviously that the GRAIN OF THE ROAD is a very important, albeit a subtle visual element in this photo, and a photographic nuance that virtually all the seasoned critics, anti-critics, and observers have missed! it's this road grain that gives the photo it's visual direction. and any visually awake "critic" ought to have naturally noticed it.

not only that, the road grain quite naturally explains the photo's tilt. moreover, the visual flow of this photo indeed moves left to right because of it. kudos to Marcio for self-creating this composition! and it matters not at all that he didn't cynically preplan the finished work. what matters is that he kept his mind's eye fluid to allow it to happen. and THAT is an artistic process going on.

what Marcio missed was a higher contrast levelling treatment and a tighter crop to further intensify this visual impact, something that would help to eliminate the so-called vertigo that some viewers have brought on themselves by trying to turn their heads upside down to view what Marcio intentionally unintended by his presentation!

perhaps I missed Marcio's comment that it was a print that was scanned rather than a negative scanned then inverted. the tech details only mentioned the media, not the scan source, and I never assume anything not specifically mentioned. and I only judge what I see. and what I saw here was a good photo image that should have been better rendered by Marcio, not by another user. ironic that we had much the same discussion about the horseman image until it was cleaned up. only that time the crowd scoffed at the notion that the presentation actually mattered even though the photographer was caught by the elves with his pants down, so to speak. and one more thing. many of the jpg images (albeit small) on the net of leading b/w photogs of the past 50-100 years don't look very appealing as jpgs, but I suppose even those weren't scanned from the finest prints. and I wonder how many users actually bother to mash their finest print of an image into a flatbed scanner in order to upload it to the web.

"The first image that Carl pointed out is simply a higher quality photograph. It is one thing to flip a picture to an interesting angle and it is another to actually make a fine print of the same thing. Anyone can take a picture and flip it, but it takes a photographer to do the same thing at a level of quality that makes it art... To me craftmanship should be a photographers main concern before trying to be clever, new or edgy. Maybe that is the difference between those who gave this good reviews and those who gave it negative reviews."

this all sounds quite clever (heck, even Marc G. agrees) but you shouldn't let one mere fact get in the way of making a high-sounding argument. and that fact is that you simply cannot make a fine print from a digital jpg file, unless you're content to keep it in a petit folio album or to walk right up to a wall and squint at it!

the fine print test argument is a complete non sequitor in re PN. all the images you see are +/- 100k facsimiles of the real thing. and you simply don't know what the real thing actually printed would look like. but early in the thread one contributor posted a fairly reasonable facsimile of a graphically finished image of Marco's photo that I might be tempted to hang in my home if it could be made into a "fine print".

the flipping of the image is quite matter-of-fact and intuitive rather than being especially creative, surprising, or novel. one quick look at the rather dry-looking unflipped capture should be enough to convince all but the most stubborn that the shadow is the more interesting subject. not flipped, the shadow merely leads the eye to the anonymous, harshly lit and shaded deliveryman on the bike, and mostly to the bright basket cart at that. ho hum.

 

kudos to Marcio for having the open mind to come to this realization, which for a young photographer is a sign of better things to come.