I was driving over the Cascades last week to visit my son in Eugene when I spied an area that looked like it had possibilities. After a lot of walking with the iPhone I found something I liked and got out the real camera. I walked away with two images. One turned out to be a dud and that left me with only this one. The light was perfect for outdoor photography. It was overcast but the sun was visible through the high clouds. I was attracted to the vine maple but I wanted the moss to be the background. This gave me few composition options. I kept moving to the left so that the maple would move to the right.
Itâs not a really tight composition. I am concerned about the bottom of the image in particular. Things are coming in from the sides. I donât know. I was able to create some dark boundaries near the bottom to give it some shape.
What do you think? How can this be improved or what should I have done?
This is simply perfect as is Igor. I love the soft green textures in the triangle in the URC as well as the very vibrant and colorful hues in the triangle in the LLC with the dark band bisecting the two from the BRC up to the TLC. The composition is top notch. I really donât see how this could be improved at all. You did well to move around and capture this scene as you did.
Wow, I didnât even notice that those had green in them. I modified the greens globally just for the tree on the left that was just dominating with intensity. However, as you point out the greens in the moss have been lost. To my way of thinking that is unfortunate because those werenât pure greens but a component in a color that I quite like. Besides, I actually removed that color. Itâs going to be tricky to have modify greens in just the tree. Maybe not. Iâm only interested in bring them back in the moss and that may be doable. Thanks for noticing that. Itâs something worth playing with.
There. I cooled the moss a bit. The moss wasnât green but yellow that was too warm due to WB adjustments. I used HSL to cool it but could have used color balance I guess.
Is this better or worse? I didnât want to make it too strong because I want the maple to dominate. See above for subtle difference.
I think I like the original more. Itâs a beautiful color but that doesnât mean itâs works well. Itâs starting to get that manipulated look when you do local color adjustments. Some people go for that ⌠and win prizes.
I just have to agree with what has been said above, a great image. For me the red leaves and the transition from yellow to red leaves is also an important part of the image. I like your original posting best.
I agree with everyoneâs love for this image, Igor. I appreciate that you found two triangular shapes composed of diverse elements, all balanced against each other. Trees, shrubs, mosses, branchesâŚit is a soft a beautiful nature scene, wonderfully seen and composed.
Quite excellent on many levels. So glad you poked around until you found something. Itâs unusual and very interesting. The shapes & colors, the two big triangles coming together. I love the way the trunk in the back provides such an appropriate backdrop. The change in green is so subtle that I really had to look hard to see it so I wouldnât say itâs overdone. The conifer to the left still looks natural and not too intensely colored. What a haunting beauty.
This looks really good, Igor. The two versions are quite close but I slightly favor the warmer moss. But I am not seeing a whole lot of difference when viewing the image overall.
What a great find, Igor! You do these type of intimate scenes so well and this one is no exception. Although the changes you made with the repost are very subtle I think I still prefer the original. The image has so many wonderful details to savor; I am particularly liking the moss. No suggestions from me.
I hope you are not offended by this but I have never liked this expression. Painters create art but photographers find it. This seems to be particularly common with intimate images. I guess Eliot Porter was one of the greatest âfindersâ. Again, donât take this the wrong way but I just had to say this because it happens so often.
Not offended at all, Igor. I meant it as a compliment not a slight. I wish I had your eye for extracting these kind of intimate scenes from the surrounding landscape.
I know you did. And I didnât take it as a slight. I just wanted to say my thoughts. They are not new for I have felt that way for years. It is a common remark made as a compliment to many and by many. I am probably making something out of nothing. If so, I apologize.
My thoughts probably come from my readings. For years photography was looked down upon as less than art. Baudelaire was one of the biggest opponents. There was this stigma that all of them had to deal with - that the camera did all the work. We just found things and clicked the shutter. It wasnât until I believe until the 1940s that photographs were shown at MOMA. Stieglitz was perhaps the man most responsible for convincing the world it was an art form. Anyway, thatâs why I have that reaction. But I know that people donât imply all that when they say it.
A couple of Baudelaire quotes:
If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.
This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become artâs most mortal enemy.
Ok, I couldnât help myself. Igorâs points got me to thinking -
One thing I find interesting about the idea of photography as an art form is that primarily people value its ârealityâ - that most people expect and want the literal aspect of a photo. But now with photo editing it can be an extension of a photographerâs vision beyond what she actually saw. Itâs why pictures of naked people can be pornographic in a way that paintings of them canât. Itâs the immediacy and reality of people doing those things in front of a camera - itâs voyeuristic and revealing. Not in every case, but you get the idea. A painter could have dreamed up the whole thing, but a photographer has to be presented with a subject - it has to be there in front of her. Itâs tantalizing to think of something private being so scrutinized and captured. It has an aura of a dispassionate attitude that I donât think painting conveys.
Photographers are technicians in a way that painters are not, but now that we have tools like Photoshop and Luminar, we can stretch the boundaries of reality. But now people call that âcheatingâ. Is it an effort to keep photography in a box? Possibly, but I really just think itâs a byproduct of not being able to manipulate a photo easily in the past. That it represents some kind of truth that a painting wouldnât. A reality that canât be faked even though now it can be. Does that break the deal we have with photography, that itâs about reality and literal depictions of things? Was that ever the deal? Should it have been? Who do you trust?
I had a conversation with @Diane_Miller about obstructions in waterfall photos and how one time I jokingly mentioned to a photographer back in the day about wanting to take a chainsaw to a fallen tree that blocked my composition. That other photographer at the time took offense to this like I was going to burn down the forest so I could see better. I never did take the chainsaw to the falls, but Diane said that if I was a painter, would I have included the fallen tree? Thatâs the option painters have and one we donât for the most part.
So what do we do about overt photo manipulation? I know many of us strive for realism in our images and apply varying degrees of editing to them. Is it more or less artistic to do so? Is doing less preserving the idea that the products of photography should be left alone? That itâs âcheatingâ to edit extensively? Which way do we want it? To confine ourselves to the technical realities of in-camera capture and leave it at that, or extend into the sorts of choices painters have always had?
I got behind and hadnât seen this one until today. Itâs gorgeous, with the Maple against the cooler tones and the very lovely draping lichen. (The âmossâ is lace lichen, Ramalina menziesii).
I think it would be possible to modify the greens of the evergreen without changing the colors in the rest of the image. Iâd try brushing on a soft-edged quick mask and messing around with Selective Color for Greens and Yellows. It might be possible to select a soft-edged area where there isnât enough lichen included to make a noticeable change.
Iâm often guilty of saying an image was a great find, but to me it only means the photographer had the artistic vision to see what could be done with the image.
Would I physically remove an element I didnât like, if possible? Certainly, if it didnât harm the environment. (Kris, if youâll grab that end of that fallen tree Iâll get this endâŚ) So I donât think removing it in post will do any harm. I will also modify colors and use so-called artistic filters and effects. I just wonât claim thatâs the way it was.
You may enjoy reading Guy Talâs More Than a Rock. Itâs a subject that really gets him going. He feels strongly that there should not be a marriage between photography and a capture of exact reality. The truth is that from the times of the Renaissance onward art has tried to accurately depict reality. The only reason it didnât was due to lack of skill and lack of good paints. Artists used to grind their own paint until the late 19th century when you could buy it in tubes. The truth is that realistic art is still art and therefore that canât be used as a criteria.
Yet Guy often rails against images that are ârepresentationalâ. If youâre on Facebook you might follow Guyâs page because he includes quotes with each of his posts. Even his blogs are sprinkled with quotes. One of the most interesting quotes came from someone I now canât even remember. It said that all good art must have one ingredient: mystery. That strikes me as very true and it applies to photography as well. My better images, I feel, are not about what you see but what you think when you see them. They are purposely ambiguous to activate the imagination. Past photographers like Weston and White were very creative yet they shot unaltered images. The creativity, the art, comes from inside the photographer. Yes a painter creates something from nothing but so does a photographer through her imagination. A recent example here is @Harley_Goldmanâs image of those mud cracks. Itâs an image that wants the imagination to take off.
It strikes me that the only way that a camera is just a simple tool that does all the work is if you timed a series of shots and went for a walk with the camera at your side and a shot went off every 5 minutes. Anytime you make a choice with the camera you are in charge and not the camera and itâs your image. Cliche image are disliked so much because you made the shot but itâs not your image. Personally, I think that applies to cliche compositions as well. The lake in front of the mountain with a few clouds above. Or those undulating dunes in Death Valley.
