Light Within

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

Can you relate?

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

Despite the ramshackle exterior of this structure, a bit of warmth seeps through a crack in a wall and illuminates the interior.

“Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.”
—Leonard Cohen “Anthem”

Technical Details

Canon EOS 5D IV; Canon EF 28-70mm @ 40mm; f/8 @ 1/50 sec, -0.67 EV, ISO 400; Gitzo tripod; RRS BH 55; remote trigger

Specific Feedback

Whatever you think, positive or otherwise.

This is a great image, Bob. Those boards inside the window raise all kinds of questions and it even looks like there’s light inside seeping through the cracks between them, which leads to even more thoughts about what might be happening. The missing plaster(?) on some of the black rocks also makes it feel as if the image is a bit askew, though I know it’s not which adds a touch of tension to the composition.

Well done.

Thank you @Dennis_Plank for your remarks. The cracks in the boards on the back , West side, wall are the source of the interior light. The image was captured on July 31, 8:02 pm hence the warm light. There was nothing behind me to reflect that light back onto the facade. The building is abandoned.

My first reaction was that the window was terrific. The blues and oranges mesh well. I’m not sure what the brighter areas at the bottom of the window are but I like them. There’s something mysterious about an opaque window.

I think you’d have been better off if you hadn’t used black and white for everything but the window. Once I noticed that, I quit experiencing your image and started thinking about your processing.

Thank you @Don_Peters for your comments and observations. The bright areas along the bottom of the window panes is the floor of the structure. The view of the floor is interrupted by what remains of the interior boards used to protect the interior. The exterior stucco was a dull, light brown and the rocks were dark brown. Not an inviting frame until I removed the color from both. I found the resulting contrasts to be eye-catching. I wanted to direct the viewer to the brightest cracks.

Bob: I love this kind of stuff but don’t shoot it anywhere near as much as I would like. Really good idea to desaturate the wall. Compelling image. :+1: :+1:>=))>

Thank you @Bill_Fach for your comments. I was also guilty of not photographing this sort of “stuff” until I realized I was no longer shooting for my own pleasure. That aha moment led me to begin a pair of long-term personal projects. What other photogs thought of them was never my consideration. It has been a rewarding undertaking in more than one way. I wrote an article titled “The power of personal projects” that is published in the Learning—Articles section here on NPN, which you may have already read.