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
The shapes and textures on the Mississippi just downriver from St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis caught my eye as I walked across the Stone Arch Bridge with my daughter and her border collie on a 70 degree day on March 3. I challenge myself to see as I look at the water. What do you see this abstract?
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
Story is above. The image is truly a vanishing spectacle of nature as the current churns it away. What do you see?
Technical Details
Since I forgot to bring a camera, this is an iPhone 11 shot, upscaled after cropping.
Specific Feedback
Any of the above.
1 Like
Very interesting patterns!! Wonderful that you captured it with what you had – I never seem to manage that. Soft light gave you great tonalities. If it were mine, I would do a shorter gradient burn on the bottom (in addition to the darkening here, which is maybe just natural). I think you could also burn the UL corner.
Bizarre temperature. Our younger daughter went to grad school there and one day she said the high was in the negative double digits.
Thanks, Diane. You mean lighten the bottom with a gradient? I agree with darkening the ULC. Yes, weather all over is nuts and a new normal I’m afraid. Yes, it’s typical to have a week or two in the minute digits in the winter. This winter it only happened once for a couple days. Thanks for your helpful edit suggestions.
I meant darken the lightest tones at the bottom, with a soft gradient.
Ghostly. Kind of like smoke floating on the water. Lovely swirling patterns surrounded by the stipled texture. I tend to think the right side is a little dark and empty, though.
Cool smoky patterns Larry. This resembles an aerial view of a hurricane in formation. To help fill in that empty right side, I recommend rotating the image clockwise. I went ahead and applied a cooler tone treatment to the image since I felt the original was a bit flat. Your image would also work nicely in black and white with darker shadows and slightly brighter highlights.
A very neat abstract, Larry. I like the interpretation that Alfredo put on it as the original did feel a bit flat. I think there are lots of ways to go with this and it’s one that you could play with in processing for a day or two before you finally discovered the magic formula for the best.
Thanks, @Alfredo_Mora and @Chris_Baird and @Dennis_Plank . Your suggestions are excellent is @Diane_Miller 's. I will let your creative improvements cook for a day or two and then work on the image again. I like Alfredo’s cooler tone.
Nice foam! I sort of see monsters rising from the deep. If you wanted it to be more abstract, you could crop in even further, to the edges of the foam. That would remove the context of the water, especially in the ULC.
Here’s my idea - crop in to foam, flip vertically (my eye liked it that way, but YMMV), bring up contrast with a curve and toning (warm the lights, cool the darks). However you process it, though, it’s a cool photo!
I just couldn’t resist playing with this one a bit, Larry. In PS, I rotated and cropped it. To me it looked like a B&W, so I started looking at what luminosity masks would produce. I settled on a Darks 2 mask exported as a pixel layer then applied a levels layer to bring the whites up and a curves layer to bring out the level of detail I liked in the shadows.
As I mentioned above, you can play with this one forever.
@Bonnie_Lampley and @Dennis_Plank, there are so many creative ways of seeing this abstract image. That’s the wonder of photography - it’s all in the seeing. Your concepts of the image give me much to percolate. I will try to repost a couple of revisions, but need a few days. Bonnie, what is YMMV? Thanks.
@Larry_Greenbaum, YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary. I think Kris Smith here on NPN used it and I picked it up.
Thanks again to all of you for your interesting and helpful comments. The fact the you imagined different visions or stories in the image tells me it works as an abstract. @Dennis_Plank your rework of the image is amazing. I can’t begin to figure out how you found the crop you posted - it’s surreal and wonderful. I ended up combining the suggestions of @Alfredo_Mora and @Bonnie_Lampley to come up with this rework. I see dancers in the image and wanted to retain that message.
I added some blue to make it less flat and added contrast and a slightly tighter crop.
I appreciate all of your input.
Excellent job on the repost, Larry. I really like this.
Thanks Dennis, you were most helpful.
