Trust your Intuition

Image Critiques Landscape Critiques
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Trust your Intuition
Trust your Intuition1989×2298 2.09 MB

This is a lesson learned, or revisited for me and perhaps could be for others. Trust your intuition, your vision. We all have literally thousands of images on hard drives. Why did we frame and then click the shutter? I can certainly say that the DSLR didn’t improve my photography, in fact it may have caused me to drift away from what was drawing me to photograph a scene in the first place. It’s way to easy to fire away, snap pics, move on to the next scene, losing all sense of what makes me stop to photograph in the first place. Then we cull through hundreds of images on the computer, picking out the ones that stand out and quite literally overlooking so many where that vision has been forgotten.

This was the case for me with this image. This is an area along the Merced River, just outside the borders of Yosemite NP., an area I’ve visited more times than I can count. I love the manzanita, the oaks, the lichen and moss covered boulders. The manzanita is so expressive - and colorful. I spent a couple hours in this area, near the river, across the river, snapping away at different scenes, all the while loving these trees.

Upon my return and subsequent review of all the raw images, the image of this scene sat ignored, overlooked. Then just recently I decided to open the below image to see what I could do with it. I started to “develop” the image; a crop here, a little clone there, some tweaks in ACR and soon the vision that I had forgotten began to surface. I was now “seeing” what my mind unconciously recognized during that moment in time I framed and clicked the shutter. But the frame I captured in the camera that day wasn’t my vision - but it was captured and stored within the frame to be re-seen in the future, or perhaps never. (As it’s framed, the tall vertical isn’t the vision and I don’t care for the tall, vertical format… and of course I didn’t want to include the shoulder of the road…) .

I don’t know if this image is successful or not. But I do know that giving it a second chance, I was able to recall what I felt and invisioined at that moment. Trust your intuition, recognize why you wanted to photograph a scene in the first place

Type of Critique Requested

  • Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
  • Conceptual: Feedback on the message and story conveyed by the image.
  • Emotional: Feedback on the emotional impact and artistic value of the image.
  • Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

Thank you for taking a look. Would love to hear your thoughts on this; not only the comp, processing and technials (feedback always welcome!), but also your thoughts on this concept of develping images and recovering what it was that caused you to photograph in the first place.

Specifically, I’m curious what your thoughts are with the grasses and rock at the bottom. Too bright, crop? The rock was too big to clone - at least that I was comfortable with; as it were, there was some bright lichen on top that I did clone. I also made the grasses a little more pale as it’s too easy to let the sat/vib sliders go too far with yellow. Thanks for your thoughts on that.

Thanks!

unprocessed RAW image:

52D2506VRaw
52D2506VRaw1001×1500 743 KB

Technical Details

Nikon D800, 28-300mm @120mm, f/8 1/5s iso 100. single frame, probably a CPL, overcast and drizzly.

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Lon, I knew at first sight that this image is yours. It gives me a wondeful sense of this intimate scene. I especially admire the green and brown shades working together.

And I can understand why you overlooked the file in your archive. The original aspect ratio is not consistent with the emotional content in my opinion. Deciding for a 4:5 crop allowed you to enclose the group of trees and rocks and thereby convey the comforting intimacy of this place as you might have felt it. Hope that makes sense to you.

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Some people say that they don’t like to post process images right after shooting them because they want to distance themselves emotionally from the memory of the experience so they edit the image more objectively. While that may have some merit it’s not something I believe in because you risk losing the emotions you had when you took the image and to what inspired you to take the image in the first place. This can happen easier than you think because often RAW files look and feel so different to the actual experience.

I too have many old files in my catalog that when I look at them now, I don’t feel anything and you are so right in that we need to trust our intuition because somewhere in that RAW file is (hopefully) that thing that made up take the shot in the first place.

Anyway, I think you did a great job with this, especially when you compare it to the RAW file and like Peter said, I could tell this was yours even before I saw your name next to it. To me the image looks great, including the entire bottom are with the grass and the rock. I don’t think that I would change anything.

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This is a really special image and I’m glad you posted it. It shows how truly beautiful manzanita bushes are. I have been attracted to them for years but pulling a good image is not that easy in my opinion. Here it’s the composition that makes the difference with the rock on the left and the branch from the right coming over it. All of this gives a great compositional balance. Also, the brightness of the moss helps balance because it fills that emptier space on the left. There’s a lesson here on how to combine different subjects to create balanced and rich compositions.

But what interested me most was the difference from the cropped version and the raw file. Not in terms of cropping but in terms of seeing. Photography has been derided largely because ‘the camera does all the work’. A painter starts out with nothing and creates a work of art. Photographers don’t have to do that so they’re derided for it. But when you consider that the photographer has to work with what is present and not what you invent you realize what a task that is. We go out and look at a really complex world and try to find bits of art in that. That’s remarkably difficult. Your image shows the art that was a part of it that you had to discover. But even before that there was a multitude of brush and trees before you even saw that raw image you uploaded. Both mediums involved creativity. Neither is more creative than the other in my opinion.

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Lon,

When I saw this I thought you were re-posting an image of yours that I recalled from that same area along the Merced. In any case, the composition is great. The rock anchors the image well and gives balance against the vivid color of the manzanita trunk. I am wondering if your crop from the top allowing some of the manzanita to be cut off was to exclude the yellow hillside behind the tree?

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Like Tom, I am a process right away kind of person, but sometimes I do dig into the archives to see what I might have overlooked. Most don’t sway me into working with them, but your example here might change my mind. You are right when you say we can be snapping away, engaged and excited about what we might get, but when we see it later we’ve lost what we came for. Some of that is what I call the Untranslatables. Meaning that what I saw in 3D gets lost in 2D and sometimes that’s that. Since my beginner days I’ve learned to recognize this before I take the photo, but things slip through. And it’s so much easier to try things with digital than it was with film.

What Igor mentioned is also true. During a recent workshop we talked about it, too, that a painter starts with a blank canvas and fills it in, photographers start with everything in the frame and have to take things out. Whether you do it in camera by zooming and repositioning or in post by cloning or cropping, we need to decide what tells the story we intended. I think this is an excellent example of that. The grace and presence of the tree is tremendous. As also pointed out, the composition is sublimely balanced and I really like the treatment of colors and shading from light to dark. All in all a worthy subject and lesson.

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Lon,

The drizzly overcast works well for the Manzanita trunk enhancing the red color and emphasizing the complimentary greens. Thank you for not cloning or cropping out the boulder in the lower right. This boulder completes a triangle making the image more dynamic in my opinion. Thanks for sharing.

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I have to start off by saying that I think this is a sensational image, Lon. The composition is sooo balanced and it only becomes balanced because of what you chose to keep in the frame and what you chose to delete in the frame. Keeping those two foreground rocks is critical to the composition and provides the balance that the rest of the scene needs. I too, have always loved manzanita trees because of their super expressive, colorful, twisting branches contrasting with their vibrant green leaves. There’s nothing like them.
I personally take images, immediately come home and download them and start culling immediately. If I come back to them at a significantly later date I have either no feeling or a reduced feeling of what it was like shooting it and I generally have moved on to more recent work that captivates my attention more easily. However, I have been known to go back through the hard drive to search for little gems that were forgotten in time for whatever reason only to find that you’ve got a treasure to behold. I think that’s the case for you with this shot. Good of you to see the potential also. I know when I cull, I’m moving pretty quickly and I think I would have skimmed right past that raw file so the fact that it caught your attention means it resonated within you, sparked some distant memory. It certainly paid off. I love the image and I love your story about it. Thanks for sharing this one Lon!!!

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I’m so behind here but just had to stop and say how much I love this image! The subject and composition are wonderful and you have achieved a kind of softness in the tonal balance that is very inviting. Nothing to add to the excellent points raised above.

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Lon, I’m a bit late to the party so everyone has taken the words out of my mouth. I love this image. I love the stones. I love the grass and I especially love this gorgeous tree. Fantastic job!!!

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Lon, I too knew before reading anything that this was yours, something about the subtlety and visual balance… Your result is a view to enjoy again and again.

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Thank you all so much for your comments and kind words. I’m glad to know that what I was trying to express in my commentary connected with many of you, and I appreciate your personal thoughts. Some additional comments below, and I will say that this is helping me develop and grow my own photography further - something I never really thought about until recent discussions here on NPN. Who would think you could teach an old dog new tricks… :slight_smile:

Thank you @Peter_Richter , @Tom_Nevesely , @Igor_Doncov , @Youssef_Ismail , @Kris_Smith , @Paul_Dileanis , @David_Haynes , @Diane_Miller , @Donna_Callais and @Mark_Seaver !

Absolutely makes sense! We aren’t constrained by the framing/format/focal length that the camera/lens capture - nor should we ever be constrained by that!

This is true Tom - I have many thousands of such images… However, there are perhaps just as many in my files where I can remember exactly the circumstances, conditions, what I was feeling at the time… one of the beauties that I enjoy so much about photography, is being able to travel back in time to that moment we got to experience.

Excellent analogy Igor - Totally agree, well stated.

Thank you Youssef - yes, indeed! Definitely wanted to exclude the bg hill and top in genera. But, the darker area on the top right edge had to be included so as to not lose the nice branch structure in the upper left manzanita. After the crop and befor any adjustments, that area was too dark, so I actually dodged/brightened along the top edge to bring it more in line with the luminosity of the rest of the scene.
And thank you for mentioning a prior image… I think you might be thinking about this image I captured in 2009 maybe just 50-100 yds down the road from this current image. And honestly, this image here is implanted in my brain and is the main reason I stop in this area every time I drive by… And I keep wanting to reshoot this, but alas, almost always you cannot recreate that first impression.

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3-39069SV1643×2048 1.43 MB

Thanks Kris - yeah, I think you’ve worded Igor’s thoughts exactly. Starting with nothing, vs. starting with EVERYTHING… and making choices to remove, rather than invent.

Thanks Paul, I’m glad to know leaving the rock in was a positive, rather than a negative element. I agree and think the overall balance and weight of everything works with that rock, rather than without.

Thanks for the comments and kind words David. I do this too! Back in the film days, there was nothing like having to wait, and then finally getting to open the box of slides and review on the light table. Now, we can do this immediately. The trouble is, instead of a few boxes of 36 slides, we literally have hundreds, and hundreds of images downloaded and sometimes I think that excitement of reviewing is lost, and replaced by some dreaded, processing of culling way to many images. Maybe it’s time to re-think the approach in the field…

Thank you all for engaging in the disucssion and sharing your thoughts!

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I’m really late to the party here, but I did want to say that this is so lovely. And so California! It’s such a typical scene that most would just pass by, but you’ve elevated it to art. The grace of the manzanita reaching out to the mossy rock is quite artful.

It’s interesting everyone’s approach to the timing of processing. I’m of the school of “let’s-wait-2-years-to-process-this-image” (only partially kidding). My usual reaction when returning home and downloading files is to think they are rubbish and ask myself why I shot that. Some time has to pass before I can re-see what I initially saw in the scene.

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I knew this was yours the moment I saw it, Lon. Not much to say here as this is perfect, in my eyes. Very interesting to see the unprocessed file along with the finished product. Absolutely nailed it!

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This is very nice; a lovely picture.
Most important is the question you making to all of us;
Why did you shoot that?

I have always been a parsimonious photographer, with regard to the number of shots, essentially because, for many decades now, and probably because of the price of the Velvia and Provia I was using at the time, I always tried to articulate, preferably out loud, “why are you to take that picture”.
I still do it now.
This obviously does not mean that most of the photos I take are masterpieces, or are even worthy of being processed. But at least I know what the original idea was on the field.

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Very late getting in here, Lon, and I don’t think there is anything I could add that hasn’t been said. For me, this posting is a master class in seeing. I am grateful that you chose to post the RAW image. I heartily agree with Igor about the art of photography with the understanding that the camera is a tool. The camera sees and, obviously contributes but ultimately it all has to be filtered through the photographer’s eye. Here you have created a little jewel out what, at first glance, appears to be a very modest image. For me, this is like alchemy - gold out of lead. As for the finished image, beautifully balanced. When, in a past life, I made a living as craftsman/designer of fine furniture, I did, on occasion, use manzanita for small parts, like cabinet handles or drawer pulls. And working with it, I discovered that it is exactly as it appears in the wild - gnarly, hard (it will dull saw blades very quickly!) and beautiful. You’ve captured all of that in this image.