The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I shot this about an hour after sunrise. Sunrise was rained out, but shortly after the rain blew out and left beautiful blue skies. The Florida heat and humidity quickly led to these beautiful clouds building rapidly, and it made for a wonderful opportunity for shooting.
Specific Feedback
Any and all comments, critiques, and suggestions welcomed.
Technical Details
Nikon Z9 w/ Z 24-120 lens @ 27mm
1/500 @ f/7.1
4 shot focus stack
200 ISO
Polarizer @ 2 stop soft grad
Tripod
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
Beautiful image, Bill.
The colour combination is superb, and the different elements each all hold interest - and collectively, this is just a great image. Perfect perspective to catch it all
Wow. The whites have been handled superbly. Clouds worthy of Ansel Adams in terms of quality. This is certainly a wonderful image. It’s such a joyous affair. It will be a great addition to your collection. I can’t come up with any ideas on how to improve this.
Really nice, Bill. I love the fact you took this picture outside the holy grail “golden” hours. There is often really great light at this time. Some might say the sky is too dark but I love it. When I shot Velvia I used to love slapping a polarizer and nd grad on to acheive this kind of sky. No nits from me.
Wonderful image, Bill. I love the richness of the colours. Is it what you actually saw? I think that is the wrong question. You could bring it up a half a stop selectively but, for me what is important is how rich the colours play. What really puts the cherry on top are those beautiful magenta flowers in the foreground. Obviously the cloud is the star of the show and the leading line of the river takes my eye exactly where it wants to go.
@Kerry_Gordon - thanks so much for your comment, and yeah, that is pretty much the way it looked, except for the darkening caused by the 2 stop soft grad. Catching a really clean shot here in Florida can be very difficult in the summer due to the heat and humidity; the air is normally hazy, especially right on the coast where I live. There was a heavy downpour (short but heavy) about an hour before this shot was taken, plus it was early, so the heat had not really taken hold yet, hence the ultra clear sky. I live for days like this because they happen far too seldom!
I saw this earlier on Facebook but I really want to comment here. I think that cloud is amazing and I love the rich clear colours in the entire image. I also really like how the reflection of the cloud interacts with the foreground and how the edge of the cloud follows the edge of that shrub. No nits from me.
That is one amazing cloud Bill! I also like the way the gentle curve in the water draws the viewer into the frame towards the cloud and it’s reflection. I also find those warm toned magenta flowers to be a nice contrast to the cool blue tones of the water and the sky. My own personal taste leans toward bringing down the saturation in the sky a little, but that is just my opinion. Beautiful scene.
This is a great image Bill. I love the vivid colors, the vivid shapes and lines. The clouds are wonderful. The little splash of bright flower power, it all works superbly.
Thank you @Ed_Williams and @Ed_Lowe. I appreciate your comments and suggestions. @Ed_Lowe - Yes, I agree and will be reducing both the saturation and reducing the darkness of the upper sky somewhat.
Interesting, Igor. I agree to a point; I want to make an image dramatic or memorable, but I also want to make it believable, unless it’s an abstract, etc.
Please expand on your thought. I appreciate your thoughts because they are always well thought out, cogent, and have a purpose.
Sure. Ansel Adams became Ansel Adams when he used that red filter on half dome in 1928. It was a eureka moment when he realized that an image was more about the distribution of tonal shapes within a space than it was about half dome itself. His work was never the same after that. In my opinion all pictorial art is above all an abstract of reality. I find it important to separate myself from the subject matter at some point during post processing and not let it affect our decisions. That’s sometimes hard to do. A good way for me is to temporarily reduce the size of the image to such a degree that you can’t identify the objects. Only the shapes and colors are apparent. That seems to help me see composition flaws very quickly. As the story goes AA finally dropped his music career and devoted himself fully to photography after seeing Paul Strands negatives in New Mexico. Negatives don’t show reality very well but they do show composition of tonality remarkably well. AA’s reaction was to something similar to what you see when you reduce an image in PS. During those early years he was moving from narrative photography to art.
Speaking of Ansel Adams. I think his work is misunderstood. I think the key to understanding it is through the knowledge that he’s a musician. His usage of the arrangement and spacing of tonal values is similar to that of music. I think his work elicits an emotional response in the same way that does music. I don’t think his images are about the magnificence and grandiosity of nature at all. Well, it’s a lot more than just about that.
I agree with that. Lots of his images had nothing to do with nature, but his processing still made them stand out. When his work toured at Pensacola’s art museum there was one shot that was just an image of a car sitting outside by a garage. At the time, I thought it was very out of place, but that image has stayed with me for many years simply because his processing was so masterful.
It’s funny, because I take much greater liberty when processing B&W than I do when processing color. While my image above is, IMHO, stretched to the max in terms of saturation as well as being a little too dark at the top, if it were a B&W I would be toning the sky even darker, and might increase the contrast within the cloud a bit more. When you remove color saturation out of the equation, that opens many other avenues to explore.
Color photography is as you say, different. I have one book that I like that says that we don’t see reality to begin with. For one thing we see a 3 dimensional world in 2 dimensions, our retina, and then mentally reconstruct a 3 dimensional world. But more importantly we don’t see colors as they really are. The colors that are adjacent to a color affects the color and the intensity of the color we see. That’s what makes a Van Gogh. He’ll change the colors of reality to have an aquamarine next to a brown or orange. That one picture of his bedroom is a great example. We should be aware of these laws of color when we make pictures. Yet I see drab greens next to pale blues all the time here in landscapes. Not everyone wants to manipulate colors like Van Gogh or Gauguin but we should still be aware of how chosen colors will affect the user because that’s unavoidable. It’s part of the way we see.
