Encounter with a Stranger

Image Critiques Landscape Critiques
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Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction

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

What is your reaction to the rock and the arrangement of rocks?

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

The day was overcast when I climbed to the base of a cliff where rocks had tumbled from the top. Most of the rocks were a deep dark reddish orange color but mixed in were very light creamy rocks. All were sedimentary. I decided that this was as good an opportunity as I could expect to find for b&w photography. So I tried to create white rocks among dark ones. It turned out to be more difficult than I expected. Because not all ‘white’ was the same and some didn’t render photographically that well. But I didn’t know that when I was shooting. That only became clear when I started making the conversions.

Technical Details

GFX50R, 32-64mm, f/11, focus stacked.

Specific Feedback

All of the above. Emotional and Conceptional being of greatest importance to me, It’s an unusual composition. Perhaps that’s why I find it more compelling than others. Although that could change from one day to the next.

Critique Template

Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.

  • Vision and Purpose:
  • Conceptual:
  • Emotional Impact and Mood:
  • Composition:
  • Balance and Visual Weight:
  • Depth and Dimension:
  • Color:
  • Lighting:
  • Processing:
  • Technical:
1 Like
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I immediately appreciated that the photographer was attracted to a small scene in a much larger context, and created a composition that conveyed why it was of interest. I see three elements --rounded mass of apparent old wood above, weathered stratified soft stone to the left and a path flowing down to the right; they have a pleasant and incomplete harmony. I like wondering about the rest of the story.

3 Likes
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Personally i would make it the center of attraction - crop accordingly ( vertical) and then darken the background

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My immediate response is that something is missing, or possibly has moved away from this scene. It has a quality of absence, but also of movement in the way the rocks remind me of dinosaur feet or maybe an elephant’s. Is the creature making space for a youngster to get some shelter? Yeah, it’s fanciful, but that what the story I told myself.

1 Like
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I see something pointing the way down the path and through the opening at the top. It does feel empty, as Kris said. The subject to me is the empty path.

Read your comment - the difference in color didn’t translate so well in b&w. Clearly the tonality is different, but not so different as to speak to me of a stranger.

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@Kris_Smith, @Bonnie_Lampley, @Dick_Knudson, @Karl_Zuzarte

Thank you for your comments.

I must admit that I’m fond of this image.