I recently took up landscape photography again more seriously. Watching and getting a lot of inspiration from various vlogs helps, but feedback is lacking. My photography friends regretfully are solidly believing in ‘those rules’ whereas I am looking to get more expression in my pictures. At the same time I believe I could strengthen my composition, especially I am struggling with the flat lanscapes we have here in the Netherlands and the plantage like forests.
For this specific image, I feel the mood is perfectly reflecting my feelings that morning,. What I found chalenging is how to blend in a foreground like this…
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
The current picture was taken just before sunrise last week. Ripe on the grass, cold atmosphere, a little tree that I have photographed probably a 100 times.
This really is an expressive image. The lone tree with all that space and the pervading blue color speaks to me. It’s not a very uplifting image but that’s fine. It’s also a fairly artistic composition. I like that you centered the tree. The square format is the right one for this centered subject because it emphasizes an equal distance from all directions and that has to do with how all alone the tree is. I also like the presence of the boulders that seem to emanate from the evanescent grass. The fact that their presence is almost like an apparition works with the overall scene. My only suggestion is the large boulder the bottom right. It’s presence is too strong. I would try dodging the darker areas of it to fit in with the overall mood. In fact, some of the darkess next to it could use some dodging as well.
Thank you Igor.
I get your point on the ‘boulders’ (they are actually the root system of the grass, normally submerged, but the drought of the last 3 years is making a mess of the meres we have (had) here in abundance). I will certainly play around with your suggestions!
Rules are just guide lines, is essencial (for me) to know them, but they are not to follow blindly. If artists didn’t broke the rules there wasn’t such a variety of artistic visions and styles. Shot what you see and what makes you happy, not what the rules tell you to.
I hope you don’t mind but i download your image and made some changes that, in my vision, would make the image more interesting, but only in my opinion of course.
I started by cropping the image to a perfect 1:1, as Igor said this composition is great for square ratios. Then i warmed to whole image a smidge, a bit more on the grass zone. Cloned a stone (i think it was a stone) on the left part of the river and dogded the darker side on the LR zone, one trunk on the background that poped up a bit and your signature that got cropped (sorry ahah). After that i created two layer masks, one to lower the contrast of the grass and other to elevate the contrast of the tree making it pop a bit more.
It’s great that you follow your guts and artistic vision, and i can’t wait to see more images.
Cheers
Thank you verry much for the effort. What really strikes me is the change in the foreground. Less Contrast on the edges, to get the viewer go into the picture more easily. On the other hand, it is really warm there (colortonewise). Not sure if I like that. The foreground is way more tranquile now, that I do like.
(and the funny bit? You basically erased all my LR doings ).
Thanks again, food for thought!
Marc, welcome to NPN. I like this view. Centering the tree works well in this scene, adding stability to the chilly feeling. I also like how you’ve handled the foreground grasses and created a ghostly feeling from the tall stalks.
Welcome to NPN Marc, I look forward to seeing more of your work here.
I like the simplicity of the image, and think the changes suggested by @João_Ferrão elevate an already good image to an even strong one. The square crop added some power to the image, and simplified the foreground. Good stuff…
Thank you for you reaction Ed! I guess that I opted for a slightly wider crop to empasize the loneliness of the tree in a wide landscape. I understand the power of square, but it always gives me a bit cramped feeling.
I agree with you on that. I assumed that the original was a square crop. The square may be compositionally stronger but emotion (and purpose) always trumps composition.
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