Night on Bald Mountain

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 this image? Emotional or otherwise (things you relate to).

Other Information

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Image Description

This is a companion piece to the Bats and Cats image:

Of Bats and Cats + new version

If you go further in the light gets even darker and shapes appear out of this darkness. The challenge was to keep the sense of darkness and yet have enough defintion in those areas (with some going very dark).

Technical Details

GFX50R, 45-100mm, f/11, focus stacked

Specific Feedback

All of the above.

1 Like

Intrigued. Where does it go, how deep is the cavern? Also getting lost in the colors, composition and details/textures keep bring me back. Nicely seen and captured, Igor.

My imediate impression is 'expressionist painting ', the colour pallette is striking, and the composition with the way the tip is placed just draws me into the cave, well I assume cave is what it is.

Refugee on the way in bad conditions. A hard sad life .

This evokes a sense of mystery and exploration for me. It reminds me of the countless hours I’ve spent in nature, looking for those quiet, unspoken stories etched into every crevice and curve. As a photographer, one is always in pursuit of capturing that elusive essence of place and time, this does it well.

The inner world is dark and gloomy. Decay is setting in.

Dark, foreboding, terrifying with that sharp pointed spear about to fall at any moment. If rocks could bleed, this is what they would look like. That pointed rock looks like it has a drop of blood on it’s tip. Yikes!
The more I look at this image, the more it sucks me in and makes me want to explore it. I see an inner world but I also see a world far removed from earth. I think it’s the colors which are highly unusual and very interesting indeed. You did well painting with light and shadow particularly the shadows. This is well seen and well rendered. I have a feeling the Raw file looked nothing like the finished version and I applaud you for painting image that tells a story.

Raw file looks as follows after applying the Provia profile. It’s pretty similar. It was a wild place, in the sense that it would put your hairs on end. Looks like I may have cropped/cloned this one.

Oh, I also shot this one at the same place. I had high hopes for it when I shot it but after making the print I was disappointed. I could never capture the mystery I saw on paper. So now it’s an ‘also ran’ image.

Igor, this has an intriguingly, dark mood. The way the shapes and colors angle across the frame looks great. Part of me wonders about a very subtle dodging of the dark edge on the right and maybe top left corner, but another part thinks that would likely reduce the moodiness… The subtle differences in color add a lot to the interest.

Your second post is similarly intriguing. I wonder if reducing the contrast by burning the greens and dodging the reds would let the reddish tones at the bottom have more presence.

There’s a tension for me between the rich color and the jagged starkness of the geology. Much like if the local mobster gave your family a turkey for Christmas; you appreciate it but you wonder.

This fits nicely with your body of work; well don Igor. (The typo was initially unintentional, but cracked me up when I caught it.)

I love the humor. I think we need more of it here at NPN.

2 Likes

Well deserved EP, Igor. The color palette is really striking to my eye.

1 Like