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Feedback Focus: Artistic / Expressive
Questions for Viewers
Does the diagonal work or ruin the image?
About This Image
On one of my last days of vacation in Ericeria, I took advantage of the low tide—as I often do—to look for small details, rocks, and patterns at low tide.
After taking a lovely walk through a beautiful area that didn’t yield any photos worth capturing, on my way back to the car—and already very close to the “populated” part of the beach—I came across this small detail that kept me entertained for a good part of an hour. Between finding the best composition and striking a balance between sun and shadow, I ended up with this little image
. I ended up using a 5x7 crop instead of the 4x5 to leave more space for the “circle” and so as not to cut off the beautiful wall in the upper right corner. A polarizing filter helped control the reflections on the water.
[Crop] I think cropping out the bright area at the top balances the tones a bit better. @joaoquintela I think the diagonal works very well. It a nice contrast to the rock at the bottom. I think maybe selecting the rock and bring up the blue and cyan tones a bit to closer match the tone on the water might help balance things as well. Nice scene.
Occasionally I really like a shot which makes your eyes move like a spectator at a tennis match. Here I’m looking back and forth from the yellow streak over the water to the circular rock pool. Rather than crop the top, I’d choose to keep the whole streak (maybe just darken the water a bit at the top). I also feel an interesting tension between the diagonals of the top half and the circular pool. With the clarity of that water, there is certainly another shot looking down into its depths, without the round pool. A lot going on here, but not, I feel, too much!
I’d be interested in what photograph you saw when you created this image.?
Do you mean the diagonal water ? without it its just a rock
The image I see is a diagonal pool with glorious reflection of the cliff above . The very top of the pool is bright so a bit of darkening here will keep the viewers eye in the frame.
My eyes follow the pool downwards and then find the same shades of blue in the pebble (see Gestalt theory in discussion - similar colours - the eye puts them together). It then catches the gold in the reflection and moves back and forth between reflected cliffs and pebble.
[quote=“Patrick Krohn, post:2, topic:52134, username:patrick6”]
I think maybe selecting the rock and bring up the blue and cyan tones a bit to closer match the tone on the water
[/quote] This emphasises the connection by colour
The diagonal works because of the shared blues. What would you like us to see in this image? What do you want to show us or what did you want to capture when you made this image?
@patrick6 - I deliberately left both the brightest part of the water—suggesting that “over there” is something different, brighter, and more luminous—and the wall in the upper right corner, which I’m quite happy with. I fully understand and appreciate the idea behind the proposed crop, but for now I’m sticking with my vision.
@Mike_Friel —my previous reply explains why I added the brightness to the top of the water.
I completely agree with the tension between the diagonals at the top and the circular pool.
@Huw_Thomas —I’ll return once more to the theme of the water’s brightness, which we could consider “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Answering the second question—what I’m trying to show is a composition in which an eye (the circular pool) contrasts with the diagonals in the upper right corner, including a triangle in shades of blue, a tone that is repeated both in the reflection and, to a lesser extent, in the circular pool.
Hi Ok - so thinking round the problem I have receiving the intended narrative (and it may just be me) is that the eye isn’t in a particularly dominant part of the image.
How about this ?
I have lightened the eye slightly - and I get the light at the end of the tunnel bit
Hi Joao,
I keep coming back to this image, and now that others have played with it, I have a better sense of everything. Initially, I had zero sense of scale. I thought I was looking into a canyon and see a high round lake from an aerial view. The scale is much smaller than I thought, but the fact that the scale was confusing to me is part of what I like about it. I still don’t quite understand whether the round element is a rock in a hole of its own making or a pool of water with gravel in it and reflecting the sky.
Regarding your question, though, yeah, I think the diagonal works well. It’s dynamic and energetic in the same way that a straight line next to a circle creates some kind of graphic tension. I can imagine a slight crop, but I greatly prefer it in its original orientation, and the length of blue gives it a weight it loses to the round shape when cropped.
