Peace of mind - +repost

Image Critiques Abstract Nature Critiques
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New version:

peace-of-mind_DSC9972
peace-of-mind_DSC99722048×2048 1.35 MB

peace-of-mind_DSC9972
peace-of-mind_DSC99722048×2048 1.34 MB

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

I’m most interested in getting emotional feedback and feedback about the aesthetics of the image. Does the image speak to you? If yes, what does it say? What is your emotional response.

Every other feedback is welcome, too.

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 depth of field of the images of my emotional landscape is deep. The emotions are sharp from front to back: joy, fear, fun, curiosity, excitement, anger, impatience, doubt, happiness, confidence, shyness, sadness, playfulness.

I have a hard time taking it all in at once. I am struggling to see where the focus is.

When I’m feeling like this, the thing that helps me most is to go out into nature. Let the foregrounds, midgrounds, backgrounds of my emotional landscape merge with the real landscape outside. Get into the flow.

I defocus my eyes to look through the subjects and objects, and let myself swing with the breath of the grass in the wind, the bubbling of the brook or the ripples in the pond.

When I take my camera out feeling like this, I leave all technical thinking and planning behind. I let the world sway in and out of focus with the wind. All movement and color. Sometimes selective focus just happens - not always.

Sometimes when I let go and just move with the flow, not longer trying to have everything in focus, the things that really matter start to emerge.

I went outside that morning and found myself in a wildflower meadow, immersed in the humble grasses and blossoms of flowers that some might call weeds. For a while my inner and nature’s outer landscapes aligned. A deep experience.

Technical Details

Bildschirm­foto 2023-07-06 um 10.23.50

Bildschirm­foto 2023-07-06 um 10.23.18

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Astrid, This is an interesting study of color. The soft blending of colors works. The two objects in partial focus, the stem to the left and the leaves to the right seem out of place. I would like to see the stem in sharper focus. The two leaves to the right edge pull the eye out of the picture. They seem to be out of place with the nature of the rest of the scene. I think if they were not there the softly focused stem on the left might blend in as is.

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Thank you so much for your feedback, Barbara! Much appreciated!

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Astrid, I find the soft focus quite pleasing. There is a dreaminess about the image and I get this sense of circular motion which draws me in. I find my eye gravitate to the two leaves on the right but then moves over the stem on the left and then back up. Perhaps cloning that bright streak up top would help keep my eye back into the frame?

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Thank you so much, Alfredo! Glad you like it!

Thank for seeing this communication between these two parts of the image! And right - will tackle this bright streak!

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You’re welcome Astrid. I just read your description which was hidden and wow, I loved it! It brings a new perspective and understanding to your image. Thank you!

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Oh wow, thank you! :blush: And I fiddled with the bright part…

See revised image in the original post…

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Looks great Astrid!

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Thank you, Alfredo!

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My initial reaction – WOW! Wonderland in a meadow! After reading the text, double wow! This kind of imagery is so opposite the literal, detailed work I usually do. I have a low success rate with this kind of imagery, although I love trying for it, and I’m in awe of those who do it.

I love the two in-focus elements and the way they interact. The grass leaves on the right don’t pull me out of the image, but into it – a neat trick you have managed there! I definitely feel the second version is an improvement.

I can’t wait to experience more of your work!

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Thank you so much, Diane! :blush:

Just stop planning. It’s easies when you let yourself be carried away by the landscape. No expectation, no “I want to make an image of…” or I want to make an image that…"

Thank you! :heart:

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My initial reaction was to be pleasantly curious about what’s in the frame. I like the mystery added by the shallow depth of field. I like what you’re doing here.

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Thank you so much, Don!

14

First impression is a feeling of bright cheer. Not so peaceful. My eye wants to go first to the brighter areas of top and the specular middle. Then to sense the more saturated base, and then to the almost-in-focus mustard stem. All-in-all sort of befuddling, but maybe I need a second cuppa this morning.
If the image is flipped horizontally, the mustard stem seems to me to be more prominent, and the background diagonals seem more optimistic as they run up to the right (I am a left-right reader).

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