This is just beautiful, and the black and white conversion enhances its beauty. The layers of foreground hills, midground mist/buildings/city and the background distant mountains give a balanced composition within the perfect panoramic crop. It is amazing how fog and mist can transform what is likely an ordinary community of houses and commercial buildings into an otherworldly fairyland. Your capture and your artistic editing are as much responsible as the atmospherics, though. Wonderfully crafted image.
Nov. 8, 2023
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This is one of those photos it's best to look at in download rather than thumbnail. There's remarkable detail in the warmly lit boat as it sits on the green water, and also detail on the bridge. There's plenty of room to do a crop, which I see that you say you considered but decided against. I would probably go for some cropping on this one (top and left), but it would change the impression to a less lonely one. The contrast between the lights and activity on the boat and the empty darkness is profound in this uncropped version. And it's your story to tell. You've told it nicely, with a lot of green water and night sky surrounding that bobbing boat full of light and action.
We could have a conversation about putting things in the middle of the frame. I've been told I am guilty of doing too much of that, and I have no real defense other than in each picture I make a decision whether or not to shoot it that way, and later whether or not to edit it that way. I err on the side of centering more than most photographers. I know this and I do it anyway.
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Looks like an end-of-season soybean field and southern barn under threatening clouds, a typical southern scene caught in a well composed capture. Farm rows and their leading lines make such wonderful compositional aids. It would be good in the original color, or in monochrome. In your transformed colors it is a bit wacky, but the composition still holds. The blown spot at the upper left is a bit of an eye magnet, I think I would crop it (or most of it) out in any version to lesson the distraction. .
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I like this. It feels a lot like my swamp pictures, with the mix of plants, reflections, shadows, and the interplay between those elements. I like the contrast between the sharply caught reeds and the hazy reflections. I agree with Linda about the straightening, the water looks like it's running downhill to the right. Straightening water scenes is very tricky business and sometimes you end up picking between imperfect choices and sometimes you tilt to create an illusion of straightness. That whole topic could use some discussion, I am sure there are multiple schools of thought on it.
A good spot, I hope you'll explore it more, it looks like there's a lot of hidden treasures to be found there.
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If this were the 1800s, there would probably be glove removal and duel challenges for such blasphemy, lol. Shot in the Midwest.
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I had to try for myself
Just a bit of a tweak
Glossy magazine style -
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So shoot me! I just got back from a trip through TN, AL, KY WV, VA, NC and they all looked like this! Maybe 'twas the color that threw me off! (I don't go the the Midwest much I confess) -
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Looks like a fascinating place. I had to google it and read about it, and saw quite few photos, some good and some not so good. Yours are solid shots, it seems, though the first one looks overworked and need a fresh edit without so much highlight recovery and vignetting. If you want to post an unworked version, some folks here might be able to suggest something to make it work better. (It likely won't be me since I'm up against the same wall with a photo I took in similar conditions and am having considerable trouble with). The second image is quite nice with its rich colors that the harsh sun didn't bleach quite as much. There's good sky detail, too, in the second one. I don't mind the shadows, they are part of the story. they can be mitigated to an extent without cropping them out. Bryan demonstrated one possibility.
Looking at the better photos of this canal, it seems that some of them got their impression of depth from focusing more downward, leaving only a sliver of sky above the horizon. If you'd had time (don't get me started on those tour operators that tell you to explore take all the photos you want, and be back on the bus in 5 minutes), you could have changed lenses to see if others would help you reach your goals.
All in all you have some good images of am amazing place that may be reworked a bit to help achieve the look you wanted.
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One thing I am enjoying with photography is to find a nice scene amongst a jungle of ugliness. This was one of those. After an extended dry spell, we had a few days of good rain. This is a just a big shallow puddle on the side of the road, behind which there is an ugly bank littered with fallen trees and piles of dirt from when they re-did the road. Personally I would remove them but it's not my decision...
The impression of the water flowing to the right is caused (to me at least) by beams of filtered sun from the right, reflecting off the water. Because I know that, I don't see the illusion. That is another topic (or expansion of your mention) worthy of discussion. I like to see how my mind might play tricks on my perception and find it fascinating at times.
For example, does this bird have two arms and two legs?
2.img-dpreview.com/files/p/E~forums/67351961/c2293d3e323e415bab5d5532b2d6050b
The 5th in the series posted here
www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67351961[edit] I do see that the water looks like it's flowing to the right. Odd I couldn't properly see it before - perhaps I didn't want to?
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That's a very cool shot. Love the way you framed it through the shutters and down the roof. Those worn terra cotta tiles and the slats in the shutters form at least two dozen leading lines that drive our vision straight to the scene below that looks like a classical southern European landscape painting. The clouds in the sky match the clouds lying across the beautiful fields, demarcated by the thinnest line of distant mountains. The colors are gorgeous and perfect. A really wonderful image that is deceptively simple but tells us a story about Place. And that story makes us want to go there and stay.
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Excellent concept and execution. I've always been intrigued with what people can do with skill and a light table. This is such a simple image, with 3 simple shapes and mostly a range of 2 colors. The complexity is in the detail and in the execution. I really appreciate your explanation of how you photographed them separately and stacked/maneuvered them digitally to give you the result you wanted, a reminder to all of us to think outside the most obvious solution and find another route to the same destination.
The print looks great on the wall, with the throw cushions picking out those colors.
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This is in some ways similar to Lou's image, a visual puzzle with people inside of it. The guy looks very happy about what he's looking at up there, and has either photographed it or is about to do so. But what he's in front of if a mish mash of stuff that is hard to figure out. Which parts of it are real and which are local signs or paintings? It looks like segments of them are held in place with straps, ,suggesting that what we see there is an illusion. Except that darned glass. It's real.
Interesting street image.
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Smile-worthy image of a couple sailing in what looks like a purple velvet stage curtain, upon a sea of leaves. The simplified processing and color containment isolated them even further and she looks annoyed at being bothered. The guy is wearing neatly pulled up black socks which is a bit odd in its own right, and there's a blue thing on his sock that matches his madras walking shorts. And is that a squirrel sitting on the edge of the stage curtain? An image that makes us smile and also think.
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Well now, that's an eye grabber. Like several images this week, this one brings immediate questions about what we are really looking at. Is this a real woman? Or a statue? Is she in a house standing at a window, or is she brought in via computer from some distant location. From a photographic viewpoint, it works. The black of the window frame is repeated in her shadowed form, and its geometry of squares works well. And of course, blue and yellow in the foliage/sky works: it always does, it is the perfect complement. I wonder if it would be more effective to have her moved a bit leftward to keep her side and the window muntin separated. But then I say that without having any notion how movable she is. This is well done, an interesting concept carried through.
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Thanks a lot. Maybe I will!
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Band after band of horizontal lines that create calmness. Then we can step into bands and explore the clues. Finely judged exposure makes it possible.
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Thank you Mike! Much work went into editing the raw file. I don't know how many stops of diffence in exposure there might have been in reality. The light and fog formations were changing quickly, not that I could have easily metered from my distant location anyway. I've dodged and burned, and adjusted whites, blacks and midtones. I've received suggestions for slight alterations, plus this is the second crop of what I shared initially in another forum. Sometimes our captured pixels give us hours of pleasure and play in our digital darkroom!
