Hi Folks,
I made a dozen or so photographs of reflections at the Newport Harbor while at the Out of Oregon workshop. This is in my top 4 from those, and much as I like it, I can’t for the life of me come up with a name. This would be one of the series that simply numbers each image, I guess.
Specific Feedback Requested
This one is all about color. I’m not sure that there is enough texture in the foreground water, but perhaps that doesn’t matter? I like the cool aqua and the warm orange, and the little bit of striping top left. To me, it has a mid-century modern feel (angular, orange juice and swimming pool colors).
Any feedback is welcome, as always, including yawns of boredom and statements of “I just don’t get it.” Really.
Technical Details
Canon 5d3 with 100-400 mm at 371 mm
ISO 200, f/25, 1/40 (none of which was intentional)!
Hi Marylynne, really lovely colors in your image. You could try rotating the image to create an even more abstract image. The orange is near the edge and feels a bit cut off to me. You could also try expanding the image down so that section takes up more of the frame.
Thanks, Alfredo. The square crop was because most of the other abstracts felt best square, and I like using the same aspect ratio in a series like this. I am sharing a couple of additional crops to see if they feel more interesting, balanced, abstract, etc. It hadn’t occurred to me that aqua at the bottom makes it more clearly a reflection of something in the distance. Interesting how hard-wired that is in our brains.
I like these kind of images! I think it could have worked a bit better if you were tighter in on that upper section or if you cropped it… it would leave for a lot of mystery … whereas here its pretty obvious that its just a reflection… so think about how you can mystify the viewer!
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the feedback @Matt_Payne and @Alfredo_Mora. At the time, it was the color contrast of the aqua and the orange that attracted me, but I see your point about the image looking like a reflection rather than looking like an abstract. I’ll keep playing with this. It was shot at 371 mm, but yeah, 400 and a crop might have been better. It’s abstract enough that a hard crop can work. I might have had to swim to get closer
ML
Here are a couple of different crops. I increasingly like the ones with minimal aqua, but now I feel like the reflections are not in focus–even in abstracts and reflections, I can see the difference between focused and unfocused forms, I’m noticing, and these are now about 25% of the original frame. so we are cropping toward the limit of the 5d3.
Marylynne, out of these three new version, I prefer # Crop. It has a nice balance to it. Photographing these water abstracts with a long lens is tough given the narrow depth of field. I don’t think the slightly out of focus areas detract from the overall feel of the image.
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