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
As usual, while open to any feedback including technical, I am most interested in how you are impacted by this image in terms of feelings, thoughts, memories or whatever or however it stirs you. I also have a question: would anyone care to hazard a guess as to where in North America this photograph was taken? I suspect you’ll be surprised.
Other Information
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Image Description
Over the last five or six years I’ve gotten further and further away from grand landscapes. I’m not sure why, exactly. I suspect because that was the first type of landscape photographs that I took and I approached it in a very formulistic way that got old pretty quickly. It’s not that I don’t take grand landscape photographs, I do, but I rarely spend time post processing them because, typically, they don’t excite me. That being said, I couldn’t resist trying to capture the big vista in this landscape. If you look at this photograph you’ll see about 2/3rds of the way up on the right side that there is the hint of a gravel path. I was walking on that path being blown away by this incredible landscape around me and wanted to make a picture of the mountain/mesa you can see looming in the background. But I couldn’t find the picture and realized that I wouldn’t as long as I stayed on the path. So, I wandered off, putting my camera down and just roaming about. When I saw this rock that became the foreground of this picture I knew that this would ground the photograph and I think it did. The little white flower in front of the rock was a super bonus that I didn’t really notice until I downloaded the image.
Technical Details
I’m clicking on the upload button to leave a screenshot for technical details but nothing seems to be happening when I do. Am I missing something?
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
Vision and Purpose:
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The thumbnail view had me wondering if that was an animal cadaver in the foreground.
The primary impact for me is definitely memories. Growing up in the desert southwest, and traveling in Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico, my memories of the landscapes were much as what you have captured here. The barren (of heavy vegetation) and open landscape has a uniqueness all its own.
The stunted evergreens make me wonder if this is somewhere far north. Canada? Alaska?
My only technical comment is that a personal preference is to have a bit more detail in the brightest areas in the clouds.
I’ve come back to this image several times. So I suppose what I’m about to write is not an initial reaction.
This brings to mind the last paragraph in the book Zorba the Greek (not the movie). It describes Zorba’s end. His last days were in a rest home. One morning they found him dead slumped over a window. When they tried to remove him they found his fingers firmly locked to the window sill.
Kerry, the mostly open with scattered ridges is very inviting to someone who grew up on the prairie enjoying the long distance views. The big rock does look like a fallen carcass if you look quickly. The land looks a bit yellow to me.
Kerry: Count me with the folks who thought this was a carcass from the thumbnail and I was relieved that it was not. Because of that initial confusion I think it draws the viewer in to investigate further and then see that it’s really just a rock. The fact that it is a completely unique element in the scene makes it more intriguing. This does remind me of some of the tundra scenes I saw in Alaska in Denali and surrounding area. Well seen, composed, captured and presented. >=))>
@John_Williams, @Igor_Doncov , @Mark_Seaver , @Michael_Lowe , @Bill_Fach : I want to thank you all for taking the time to look and comment. Let me begin by saying that this photograph was taken in Newfoundland (more on that in future postings). The terrain you are looking at is known as The Table Lands and is an ecology that is found at only three places on the planet, this one being the only one that is accessible by vehicle. As you may remember from grade 10 geography, the earth’s core is composed mostly of a iron-nickel alloy that is solid at its centre with a molten ridiculously hot outer layer. That outer layer heats up the next layer up - the mantel - and is so hot that the mantel is also largely fluid and in motion. The final layer is very thin - the crust - which is everything that we know and see about our planet - the mountains, oceans, deserts et al. Periodically, the mantel rises and penetrates the crust but then, typically, it retreats. But on three occasions, as far as scientists know, it didn’t retreat and remained above the crust. That is why, @Mark_Seaver the land looks unnaturally yellow because it really is a yellow that I or anyone else is never likely to see anywhere else. The soil has a makeup that is unique on this planet because it is mantel and not crust. There are tiny plants, lichen and fungi, that grow here and nowhere else. It is an extraordinary landscape and my wife and I spent several days hiking through this land sometimes imagining what it must be like on some extra terrestrial planet.
@Igor_Doncov-I want to thank you for that wonderful allusion to Zorba’s death. It perfectly captures what I felt when I saw this rock. I didn’t want to say anything about it prior to folks interpreting this image for themselves but, in this case, I think its appearance as a carcass is apparent.
