sherwinjames

I welcome any thoughts you may have on this photos. Critical comments

always welcomed.

I am drawn to the somewhat contradictory motion of the image. There is also a strong separation here (on the verge of being too strong - but not quite there) between the foreground and background. The photo definitely screams to me.

This is a well framed discussion. You can almost hear the conversion, but they are far enough away (as indicated by the scale of the surrounding structures) that you can't really recognize the words.

Well done.

Some additional points regarding intent:
- There is a natural tilt in the landscape at this location, which is accentuated by the natural lighting at the time of the shot. I probably could have stretched the pixels up a bit on the right (to keep the path perpendicular), but I opted to leave it as is. Maybe it was the wrong move.
- I very much wanted big sky in this shot to contrast (and in some ways) complement the emptiness of the abandoned houses and dead grass and empty path. Although the photo is titled A Family of Houses, the main characters for me were the sky and the path. I probably should have called it "Path to Emptiness", but I usually don't spend much time on titles - going with what first comes to mind.
- I wanted to have partial houses on both sides of the photo to show that this is just a small frame of a much larger situation. In actuality, there are many more of these houses at this location.
- The darker sky above is the result of a couple of things: The sky was indeed very dark and rich up above; I used a Sigma 10-20mm lense with a graduated filter - there is also some natural vignetting with with lense and the wided angle; I did slight contrast bump and slight vibrance bump in photoshop of my RAW image.
- I myself prefer the lanscape crop. I feel it closely matches my intent. But the square crop, I believe, is a bit more dramatic. The majority of my photos is on the subtle side, but sometimes I like the shot that screams.
Thanks again to all for the fantastic feedback. It is very much appreciated!

Received some fantastic feedback here!

Thanks again to the Elves for posting to PotW.

John A - I appreciate the in-depth and insightful write-up you did. My intent was not to cause confusion with my posting of the original, but just to provide some insight into my cropping to square.

Ken Papai - I have had some of my photos used, without my consent, by others and claimed as their own, so I am a little weary of posting larger photos, without watermarks. In the future, I will try to make them a little bigger for photo.net. You can always see larger (and much more) of my photos on my online gallery (see my profile page for link).

First of all: Thank you for the PotW opportunity!
Secondly: Thanks all for the great comments and feedback.
Here's the original photo (before the crop):

What do you think of this photo. It is an abstract representation of the

beginning and the end.

I like this one the best of the three shots you posted for critique. I think the white background really brings out the woman's skin tone and glow.

I really like the color in this shot (and the others).

Ouch!!

Great capture ;-) Nicely composed.

Love the DOF and the composition. The dust on the road adds to the "realness" of the shot.

Great work.

Very well done. I like the centered placement of the road. The patterns are awesome. Another approach would be to have slightly brighter highlights in the sky.

Great work as usual, Dieter!