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Critique...
#1
I posted these images in the Gallery here a while back: [url="http://forum.photozone.de/index.php?/gallery/album/62-spaces/"]Speakes Mill Mouth[/url]

I've probably looked at them too much now, and I'd welcome some feedback / advice.



I was pleased with them, at first, but I'm not sure about them now, and have a number of criticisms of them - apart from the fact that they're all similar, so as a collection they're boring / repetitive (though showing them as a 'collection' wasn't really the intention):



  • I'm not sure the images make the best use of what's in the raw files. Too dark? More fill light or increase exposure? Contrast / brightness? (I'm using Lightroom 3)



  • Horizons aren't level



  • Not sure whether B&W or colour suits certain images better



  • Shooting into and particularly including the low sun in some of the pics - was that a mistake?


Ian
#2
Hi,

Take my comment with grain of salt, but IMO main technical problem of landscapes shots is flare, with some veiling in few pics, that altered contrast. I would add some light, clarity and vibrance. [url="http://www.landscapegb.com/2010/09/shooting-into-the-sun/"]Here[/url] is a nice reading about shooting into the sun.



A.
#3
[quote name='arv' timestamp='1318094556' post='12224']

Hi,

Take my comment with grain of salt, but IMO main technical problem of landscapes shots is flare, with some veiling in few pics, that altered contrast. I would add some light, clarity and vibrance. [url="http://www.landscapegb.com/2010/09/shooting-into-the-sun/"]Here[/url] is a nice reading about shooting into the sun.



A.

[/quote]



Thanks A, useful article
#4
Hi Ian,



I liked some of these B&W shots very much. Even though mostly shot gainst the sun, the DR looks ok but it can be improved. I can suggest a pair of to-dos based on my present B&W workflow:



- It's better to post process B&W in raw converter (in my case, ACR). CS4 has it's limits...

- play with various color channels (focus on the colors you give higher priority) and check how the image look like. E.g. check the noise, check DR and moreover, check how the particular shapes/parts of the image stand out with the slider up/down. You will see that the color channel sliders are very powerful in B&W)

- play with the global contrast and the clarity slides very carefully, especially if you post process portrait shots with very limited DoF. From my experiences, I can say that the clarity slider worsens the transitions in blur if increased too much.

- If the DR is still not satisfactory, open image in PS and use shadow&highlights -very carefully- not loose too much contrast. Actually, I use S&H as a last resort...



And concerning the low sun image, I find that the most challenging thing to set in such shots is the WB. It usually looks like coca cola sky (as yours) if you use auto WB. Try to decrease it in your raw converter.



I hope it helps...



Serkan
#5
[quote name='PuxaVida' timestamp='1318167247' post='12239']

Hi Ian,



I liked some of these B&W shots very much. Even though mostly shot gainst the sun, the DR looks ok but it can be improved. I can suggest a pair of to-dos based on my present B&W workflow:



- It's better to post process B&W in raw converter (in my case, ACR). CS4 has it's limits...

- play with various color channels (focus on the colors you give higher priority) and check how the image look like. E.g. check the noise, check DR and moreover, check how the particular shapes/parts of the image stand out with the slider up/down. You will see that the color channel sliders are very powerful in B&W)

- play with the global contrast and the clarity slides very carefully, especially if you post process portrait shots with very limited DoF. From my experiences, I can say that the clarity slider worsens the transitions in blur if increased too much.

- If the DR is still not satisfactory, open image in PS and use shadow&highlights -very carefully- not loose too much contrast. Actually, I use S&H as a last resort...



And concerning the low sun image, I find that the most challenging thing to set in such shots is the WB. It usually looks like coca cola sky (as yours) if you use auto WB. Try to decrease it in your raw converter.



I hope it helps...



Serkan

[/quote]

Thanks for this, Serkan. I'll give the channels a try!

Ian
#6
Hi Ian,



In my opinion the 'problem' (if it can be called that) with your series is the composition. I would put aside all light/colour considerations for a moment and look carefully at each image: try to discover the 'subject' or focus point of each image, where the lines take your eye, and where the horizon 'feels right' (most of them feel 'squeezed' vertically, rather than achieving the (quite difficult) intensity of a narrow band of sky).



In most of the images (again just my view), there are a lot of nice contrasts, but actually nothing really interesting to hold the viewer's gaze (though I would consider re-framing no. 2 to see if it works - somehow the person in the image gives it an added dimension). Some technical tweaks might give the images more 'pop', but I don't think they will solve the underlying issue of composition.



As you say yourself, they're too similar to form a collection - which itself a quite a tricky notion. Whereas the most basic form of collection can be several pictures of trees, or houses, or a certain landscape; there can be much deeper layers to how your images form relationships. In the case of your shots it could be the shapes formed by boundaries between the rocks and the water, or the linear interplay between the rows of rocks and the horizon - any number of graphical contrasts.

So it's often about choosing a particular aspect of the scene that has many facets, and shooting a series to illustrate those facets.
#7
[quote name='Pinhole' timestamp='1318253997' post='12262']

Hi Ian,



In my opinion the 'problem' (if it can be called that) with your series is the composition. I would put aside all light/colour considerations for a moment and look carefully at each image: try to discover the 'subject' or focus point of each image, where the lines take your eye, and where the horizon 'feels right' (most of them feel 'squeezed' vertically, rather than achieving the (quite difficult) intensity of a narrow band of sky).



In most of the images (again just my view), there are a lot of nice contrasts, but actually nothing really interesting to hold the viewer's gaze (though I would consider re-framing no. 2 to see if it works - somehow the person in the image gives it an added dimension). Some technical tweaks might give the images more 'pop', but I don't think they will solve the underlying issue of composition.

[/quote]

Hi Pinhole,

Thanks for this feedback, much appreciated.



Can I ask you for a bit more advice?

As you say, many of the compositions look 'squeezed' vertically - the result of me cropping out the sun which I'd included in the original pictures.



Here's No.2 with the horizon angle corrected, and including the sun.

Where would you crop this? Do you think it works with the sun included, or better to crop it out?



[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]



Thanks again...

Time for a weekend Landscape Photography workshop, I think...! <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='Smile' />

Ian
#8
[quote name='IanCD' timestamp='1318273474' post='12265']

Hi Pinhole,

Thanks for this feedback, much appreciated.



Can I ask you for a bit more advice?

As you say, many of the compositions look 'squeezed' vertically - the result of me cropping out the sun which I'd included in the original pictures.



Here's No.2 with the horizon angle corrected, and including the sun.

Where would you crop this? Do you think it works with the sun included, or better to crop it out?



[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]



Thanks again...

Time for a weekend Landscape Photography workshop, I think...! <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='Smile' />

Ian

[/quote]



Hi Ian,





Thanks for the reply- hope my input is useful ...



I think the sun should be in the crop, because there aren't many alternatives for leaving it out - the whole thing would either shift to the left or the horizon would be too low...



You might want to try cropping away the bottom 1/5th of the image (that is, get rid of the shingle on the lower right corner): this leaves you with a graphically 'clean' image of just rocks and water, which you can either leave as a 'cinemascope' wide image, or then experiment with cropping away either from the left or the right.



The shingle in the foreground is a bit troublesome, because it doesn't have a 'story to tell' (in my opinion). It might have been better in this case to use a larger aperture and have the shingle in focus, gradually trailing off to a blurred figure by the water (or vice-versa). The aperture can play an important role - together with your framing - in determining where the viewer's eye is drawn in the shot (and we are not always looking at the 'in focus' parts of a photo).



As for the exposure, my instincts would tell me to not go overboard with the contrast (the image is contrasty enough), try to recover some colour and highlights, and 'warm up' the image to match the time of day (a sunset shouldn't feel 'cold').



Hope my comments are helpful!



Regards,

Pinhole
#9
Double post ...
#10
I would like to thank Pinhole for spending time and help newkomers.



Ian – I fully agreed with pinhole. For contrast – in such tricky situation I’m forced to use bracketing or ND grad filters. Here is one example – http://86.83.201.134/Photowork/album/See..._last.html

And one more thinks – don’t give up. I’ll end up with Shakespeare



Where There's A Will There's A Way

Greetings,

Miro
  


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