Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
Immersion in the wilderness can be an immensely rewarding experience for a photographer, it can also be difficult when conditions or other factors aren’t conducive to image making. Sometimes things come together at the right time, other times they don’t. That is part of the continual challenge and allure of photography. Does this image provide a sense of immersion and allure to the viewer…? Would you care to share some thoughts on what visiting this area was like when viewing this image?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
Fast fading light at dusk posed a challenge when finding a composition that conveyed the feelings felt in this region of the Tasmanian highlands that I hadn’t visited before. I settled on a placement for the tripod and then proceeded to methodically set the camera up and compose the image. I applied some tilt to the rear standard to provide a stronger graphical quality to the flowers in the foreground. I closed the shutter and looked up at the scene and everything was bathed in soft, beautiful light as the sun had just gone below the horizon. Quickly metering the scene, I loaded the dark slide, exposed the sheet and hoped I had captured what I saw…
Technical Details
I don’t take field notes in most instances, but I can say that the aperture was f22 with a shutter speed of 4 - 8 seconds if I remember correctly. The image was captured on 4x5 Fuji Provia 100f colour reversal film via a 90mm Nikkor lens on a 4x5 field camera. I scanned the sheet of film and then performed minor curves correction in Ps, mainly to bring a bit of brightness out of the sky. In hindsight, I should have fitted a 1 or 2 stop graduated filter on the lens…
Specific Feedback
Aesthetic and emotional feedback predominantly, & technical… Thank you
Oh the light is lovely for sure. Soft and still bright enough to see details and textures. I get the sense that I’d have to wend and weave my way through this landscape so as not to crush or disturb the flowers too much. In the daytime it must be buzzing with bees and other pollinators. Are the flowers very fragrant? I can just imagine the rush to the nectar. I wonder if a lower angle would have created an even more immersive photo so that we could be down in those flowers. You’d lose the landscape behind, but I bet you could recreate some of it with the flowers themselves.
I think you have the beginning of a good image here. In my opinion, it needs a tighter crop, removing the sky and the dark foreground. The red flowers are very nice and the way they are positioned is interesting.
I think you are right Kristal, I hope to revisit the scene at some point with a bit more time up my sleeve to recompose. The sky is too prominent and doesn’t add anything to the scene & the deep shadow in the foreground doesn’t really help either…!
Hi Charles,
First off the light is lovely as are those lush red flowers. I can see myself bending down to smell the fragrance of the flowers; so yes I can immerse myself in this scene. I do agree with the suggested crop of the dark areas in the FG, but I quite like the sky as the magenta in the clouds enhances the red of the flowers so I would not crop it. I hope you do not mind, but here is a repost with what I was thinking.
Thanks Ed, I appreciate you having a look at it for me. Your crop works as the FG was not really adding anything to the image compositionally. I might crop a bit more of the sky to tone it down a bit more and see how it looks…
Not all browsers properly show the Adobe RGB color space; it might be safer to convert to sRGB for posting.
Great thoughts above, and the only thing I might add to play with is the color balance of the non-sky portion. Although a really red sky can cause the foreground to really shift in color, your sky is subtle and I wouldn’t expect the foreground to shift much. To my eye, moving it more green livens it up a bit; those flowers are so red they can take the hit. In addition, I often find I like the deep shadows less saturated. Here’s a version playing with those ideas as food for though, as always your taste may vary:
Thanks John, I think your edit looks better. I am no Ps wizard and I do find that if I look at an image for too long my eyes seem to neutralise colour casts that perhaps aren’t good for the overall composition… I shall revisit this image and see what I can do, following the suggestions made.
