Critiques
by Michael Frye | Aug 12, 2010 | Critiques
“McGee Creek” by Joe Lemm
This week’s photograph was made by Joe Lemm near McGee Creek, on the eastern side of my home mountain range, the Sierra Nevada. By having his image chosen for this critique Joe will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to theFlickr group I created for this purpose.
This is a beautiful mountain scene, with a nice juxtaposition between flowers and distant peaks. The colors are harmonious and pleasing; the yellow mule’s ears in the foreground brighten the mood and give this scene an idyllic feeling. Joe was lucky to find clouds in the sky at sunrise—uncommon in the Sierra in summer. But everyone needs a little luck now and then. Technique and vision are important, but there’s no substitute for being in the right place at the right time!
When you find yourself facing a beautiful scene, you have to make the most of the opportunity. The most important consideration is the composition: what, exactly, do you frame?
In the past two critiques (“Red Sky at Night” and “Glen Coe“) I’ve discussed photographs with prominent foregrounds. In both cases I thought the images might have been stronger without them; I felt the backgrounds were more interesting, and the foregrounds distracting.
Here, though, I think the foreground clearly adds to the image; in fact I think the flowers are the most eye-catching thing in the frame. There’s a good visual connection between the bottom and top of the image: the yellows, purples, and greens in the foreground complement the golds, blues, and greens in the background. The arrangement of those flowers also meshes nicely with the peaks: there’s a subtle V shape to the yellow mule’s ears that echoes the broad V of the ridgeline and smaller Vs in the notches between the peaks.
The only minor complaint I have about the composition is that I’d like to see a little more breathing room around the prominent yellow blossoms along the bottom and left edges, and would prefer that the large flower along the left edge wasn’t missing the tips of its petals. Of course zooming out and including more space at the bottom and sides might have introduced other distractions. In a situation like this it’s virtually impossible to avoid cutting some flowers in half, and there could have been patches of dirt or rocks or other unwanted elements that needed to be cropped out of the frame.
So I’m going to give Joe the benefit of the doubt here and assume that there were good reasons for not including more space around the bottom edges. Overall I think he did a good job of finding a foreground that adds something to the photograph, and positioning the camera to emphasize that V shape of the flowers.
But as always, I’d like to hear what you think. Does this foreground work? What do you think of the composition overall?
Technically this is well executed. Joe used a small aperture, f/18, to get sufficient depth of field, and everything looks sharp, even at a larger size. Wind can often be a problem when capturing images like this—you need a small aperture to get depth of field, but that forces you to use a slower shutter speed. Perhaps Joe got lucky (again!) and found a calm morning.
Joe said he used a three-stop graduated neutral-density filter to balance the bright sky with the darker foreground. Mountain scenes like this often require a graduated filter or exposure blending to balance sunlit peaks or sky with shaded areas below. Here the transition looks pretty natural; I don’t see any obvious line that would make the filter’s presence obvious.
Non-HDR Version
Joe told me that he processed the Raw file three ways—normal, one stop under, and one stop over—then merged those three images with Photomatix HDR software. The result appears natural, again, with none of that HDR grunge look. The only hint that this might be HDR is that some of the colors, particularly the yellow-orange flowers, might be slightly over-saturated, and when viewed larger you can see a thin blue halo along the tops of the peaks—although that might be chromatic aberration in the lens (which could be fixed in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw), or oversharpening, or both.
Joe said that he also processed the image without HDR, and actually liked that version better, so I asked him to send it to me, and here it is (left). Personally I prefer the HDR version; the shadows are more open, and it feels more luminous. Just for fun I tried to adjust this non-HDR version to look more like the HDR version. I used a little Fill Light in Lightroom to open up the shadows, added Clarity to boost midtone contrast, then increased Vibrance to approximate the saturation in the HDR version.
The result, shown below, is actually pretty close to the HDR photograph, and in some ways I like it better. But it shows that there are many ways to process an image. There are no right or wrong answers—just different interpretations.
Non-HDR version with added Fill Light, Clarity, and Vibrance
Overall this a well-seen, well-executed photograph in which the foreground and background complement each other nicely.
Thanks Joe for sharing your image! You can see more his work on Flickr.
If you like these critiques, share them with a friend! Email this article, or click on one of the buttons below to post it on Facebook or Twitter.
As part of being chosen for this week’s critique Joe will receive a free 16×20 matted print courtesy of the folks at Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques, just upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose. If you’re not a Flickr member yet, joining is free and easy. You’ll have to read and accept the rules for the group before adding images, and please, no more than five photos per person per week. I’ll be posting the next critique in two weeks. Thanks for participating!
by Michael Frye | Jul 29, 2010 | Critiques
“Glen Coe” by Tim Smalley
This week’s photograph was made by Tim Smalley near Kinlochleven, Scotland. By having his image chosen for this critique Tim will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose.
The first thing that grabbed me about this photograph is the wonderful light. The dappled sunshine, rich colors, and strong contrast create a powerful mood. It looks like a scene from Lord of the Rings; I could imagine winged Nazgûl swooping down over the valley.
Tim said that “There was a certain emotion that I wanted to express” about Glen Coe. “The weather is often quite mixed . . . and there can be some phenomenal light, even during the day as the sun breaks through parting clouds.” (more…)
by Michael Frye | Jul 15, 2010 | Critiques
“Red Sky at Night” by Ellie Stone
This week’s photograph was made by Ellie Stone at Lake New Hogan in Calaveras County, California. By having her image chosen for this critique Ellie will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to theFlickr group I created for this purpose.
We’ve all seen many sunset photos. For an image like this to grab out attention it either has to portray an exceptional sunset, or somehow integrate a less-than-exceptional sunset into an unusual and striking composition.
This image certainly captured a great sunset—the color is amazing, and the wavy, zig-zagging lines of the clouds create wonderful patterns. The scene has a powerful, end-of-the-day mood. Ellie used a 15-second shutter speed to blur the choppy water—a good decision, I think, as that smoothed out the waves and added an interesting, soft texture that contrasts with the hard-edged foreground rocks.
I’m not sure, however, about the decision to include those rocks in the first place. It’s often difficult to decide whether to include a foreground or not: Does the foreground add interest to the scene, or is it an unnecessary distraction? In this case I think the sunset sky and water are enough to hold our attention. The sky, especially, is exceptional, and to me should be the focus of the composition. The rocks don’t seem as interesting.
There’s another question to ask yourself before including a foreground: Do the lines and shapes of that foreground complement the background, or clash with it? To me the lines and shapes of these foreground rocks don’t integrate particularly well with the background.
I know some books say that you should always include a foreground, middle ground, and background in landscape photographs, but I think that’s one of those arbitrary rules that should be ignored. It’s great to include all three, but only if each is adding something to the photograph. The world is infinitely varied, and no rule can encompass every situation. As Edward Weston said, “Pictures came first. Rules followed. No one ever became an artist by learning rules or keeping them.”
With that in mind, here’s a version where I’ve cropped out the foreground. The camera position forced me to eliminate most of the water along with the rocks, but since the sky is the most interesting thing in the scene, and should fill most of the frame anyway, I think the cropped version works pretty well.
Crop A, eliminating the rocks
Of course if you can find a foreground that adds interest, and meshes with the background, by all means include it. While I don’t think the somewhat jumbled arrangement of rocks in the original version is appealing, there’s one, isolated rock on the left has a great shape, so I tried another crop which includes just that rock and a piece of sky. That works too: it’s simple, and the diamond shape of the rock echoes some of the diagonal lines of the clouds. But this composition emphasizes the foreground more than the sky, and with such a spectacular sunset I’m not sure that’s the right idea.
As always, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the foreground and the various crops presented here. Which version do you like best? Or is there some other framing that you think might be even better?
Technically this is well executed. If you’re going to include a foreground, then both foreground and background should be in focus! And they are here. The overall exposure looks right. Ellie said that she used a neutral-density filter to slow the shutter speed and blur the water’s motion, but wishes she had used a graduated filter to lighten the rocks relative to the foreground. Perhaps that might have helped, but with reflections you have to be careful not to lighten the foreground too much, as it looks unnatural when the water becomes lighter than the sky.
Despite my nitpicks about the foreground this is a very nice photograph, with great light, color, and mood, and with an effective use of a slow shutter speed to smooth the texture of the water.
Thanks Ellie for sharing your image! You can see more her work on Flickr (be sure to check out her amazing “Misty Bay Bridge” photo).
If you like these critiques, share them with a friend! Email this article, or click on one of the buttons below to post it on Facebook or Twitter.
As part of being chosen for this week’s critique Ellie will receive a free 16×20 matted print courtesy of the folks at Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques, just upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose. If you’re not a Flickr member yet, joining is free and easy. You’ll have to read and accept the rules for the group before adding images, and please, no more than five photos per person per week. I’ll be posting the next critique in two weeks. Thanks for participating!
by Michael Frye | Jul 1, 2010 | Critiques
“Forest Sunrise #1 – Olympic National Park” by Mike Livdahl
This week’s photograph was made by Mike Livdahl in Olympic National Park, Washington. By having his image chosen for this critique Mike will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose.
The most striking thing about this photograph is the fantastic light, with sunbeams radiating through the mist from behind tall trees. Light is the essence of photography. When we press the shutter we’re not recording objects, we’re capturing light. Often great light is enough to make a great photograph, even if the subject isn’t that interesting. These trees are nice, but without those sunbeams this would be a rather ordinary scene.
The exposure for such strong backlight can be tricky, but Mike handled it well. We see detail in all but the darkest parts of the tree trunks, yet the only the very brightest highlights are blown out. This is one of those rare instances where it’s okay to have some small washed-out areas in the photo, because this is something we would see in real life: looking at this scene the sun and adjacent sky would be blinding, and we wouldn’t expect to see detail in those areas in a photograph.
Mike said that he “exposed hoping to keep some life in the shadows.” As a result, he had to (in Lightroom) “damp the highlights pretty heavily, Recovery pushed to +81 and Brightness dropped to +29.” I guess that’s testimony to how much hidden detail can reside in seemingly overexposed highlights in Raw files. But if I were photographing this scene I’d keep my options open by bracketing exposures, allowing me to blend two or more images together later if necessary.
While the light in this photograph is exceptional, even great light could be ruined by a poor composition. Fortunately it wasn’t. The composition is clean and simple, with a strong focal point, the sunbeams, and some nice repetition created by the lines of the tree trunks. Mike chose a vertical orientation to emphasize the height of the trees. The sunbeams are centered from left to right, a configuration that works well in most vertical compositions (see my post about Sideways Photography).
That vertical orientation, however, with the sunbeams near the bottom of the frame, leaves a lot of space in the top half of the photo. The bottom part of the image is clearly the most eye-catching area, and I always think it’s best to fill the frame with the most interesting stuff. There seems to be a natural horizontal composition here, including only the areas around the sunbeams:
Alternate, horizontal crop
I think this tighter, horizontal framing has more impact, but it doesn’t convey the trees’ height, and loses some sense of place as well. So it’s a tradeoff. Which version do you prefer? Post a comment to share your thoughts on this.
Mike said that he handheld this photograph, leaning against a tree, at 1/15th sec. and 5.6 with an ISO of 400. Since this shutter speed resulted in a slightly soft photo, he added extra sharpening in Lightroom. In a larger view some of the closest branches are a bit soft, indicating that the wide f/5.6 aperture wasn’t enough to keep everything in focus. Obviously a tripod would have been a good idea here—it would have prevented camera movement while allowing a smaller aperture with more depth of field.
The post-processing looks well done; the white balance looks right, and the heavy use of the Recovery tool created a perfect range of contrast—small areas of black, small areas of white, with a full range of tones in between.
Overall this is well done—beautiful light composed well.
Thanks Mike for sharing your image! You can see more his work on Flickr.
If you like these critiques, share them with a friend! Email this article, or click on one of the buttons below to post it on Facebook or Twitter.
As part of being chosen for this week’s critique Mike will receive a free 16×20 matted print courtesy of the folks at Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques, just upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose. If you’re not a Flickr member yet, joining is free and easy. You’ll have to read and accept the rules for the group before adding images, and please, no more than five photos per person per week. I’ll be posting the next critique in two weeks. Thanks for participating!
by Michael Frye | Jun 16, 2010 | Critiques
“Fog Shrouded Merlot” by Mark Zukowski
This week’s photograph was made by Mark Zukowski in Sonoma County, California. By having his image chosen for this critique Mark will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose.
Mark made this image at his own vineyard. Nice place! Finding photogenic areas near your home can reap rewards, allowing you to take advantage of fleeting weather conditions. Mark did that here, using the fog to create a wonderfully moody photograph.
This image was originally captured in color, in Raw. Mark said he initially struggled with the white balance, and that’s one of the reasons he tried converting this to black and white. Here’s the color version, and I see what he means about the white balance: something seems off about the color, although it’s hard to pinpoint whether it’s color temperature or camera calibration. But even if the color could be improved this photograph would still be better in black and white. The slightly warm-toned monochrome treatment adds to the mood and gives the image an old-world feeling that seems appropriate for this setting.
The color version
I like the way the rows of grapevines lead my eyes right to the building in the background. The craggy oak right of center has a great shape, and adds an interesting focal point. Overall the composition works well.
One thing that bothers me however is the patch of dark ground at the very bottom of the frame, as it draws my attention away from more interesting things above. Trimming this edge a bit to eliminate the darkest patches of ground seems to help:
After trimming the bottom edge
We see only part of the tree along the left side, and that’s normally a problem, as prominent elements like this can become distracting when hanging along the edge. Here though that tree seems to work, as it adds an echo to the tree right of center, and cropping it out leaves the left side of the picture somewhat empty.
But perhaps this might have worked even better if Mark had included all of that left-edge tree, creating even stronger repetition between the shapes of the two oaks. Of course there may have been some distracting element just outside the picture that prompted Mark to frame the image this way. Even if there wasn’t, including all of that left-hand tree would have required zooming out and adding either more sky or more foreground, neither of which would be desirable. But cropping into more of a panoramic shape probably would have solved that.
Another idea would have been stepping further to the left, which would have brought the two trees closer together visually. From a certain angle the building could have been neatly framed between the two trees. Of course moving to the left would have changed the alignment of the grapevines, so instead of leading our eyes right to the house they would lead toward the trees left of the house. Another issue is that, as we see it now, the tree right of center stands out clearly against a lighter background; there seems to be a small gap in the trees behind it, allowing lighter fog to show through. Stepping to the left probably would have positioned that tree against the darker vegetation that we now see on the right edge of the frame. So maybe moving to the left wouldn’t have worked, but it’s always worth thinking about different camera positions when you’re there, behind the camera, and have a chance to improve the composition.
Mark used a 70 mm lens on a Nikon D700, giving the image a short telephoto perspective with this full-frame sensor. The exposure was 1/125 sec. at f/5.6 with 200 ISO. This is a pretty wide aperture, and while everything appears looks in focus at this small size, a bigger enlargement might reveal softness in the foreground or background. A smaller aperture, like f/11 or more, might have been a better choice to expand the depth of field and ensure that everything was in focus. Of course this would have required a slower shutter speed and necessitated a tripod.
The exposure and contrast look just right. The sky in the upper-right corner is the brightest part of the scene, but not really where you want people to look most, so that area should probably be darkened a bit.
But overall this photograph is very well done. It has a great mood, enhanced by the warm-toned black-and-white treatment. If you communicate a feeling, you’ve done your job as a photographer.
Thanks Mark for sharing your image! You can see more his work on Flickr.
If you like these critiques, share them with a friend! Email this article, or click on one of the buttons below to post it on Facebook or Twitter.
As part of being chosen for this week’s critique John will receive a free 16×20 matted print courtesy of the folks at Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques, just upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose. If you’re not a Flickr member yet, joining is free and easy. You’ll have to read and accept the rules for the group before adding images, and please, no more than five photos per person per week. I’ll be posting the next critique in two weeks. Thanks for participating!
by Michael Frye | Jun 3, 2010 | Critiques
“SunriseSausalito” by John Becker
This week’s photograph was made by John Becker in Sausalito, north of San Francisco. By having his image chosen for this critique Brad will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose.
The most striking thing about this photograph is the pattern formed by the vertical poles and their reflections. It reminds me of one of my own photographs that I made years ago in another part of San Francisco Bay. These old piers, pilings, and other harbor artifacts can often create interesting designs.
Another composition, made on the same morning, showing San Francisco in the background
John told me that he rose early to drive to this location, and immediately found these posts. He tried various compositions, including some that included the San Francisco skyline in the background (here’s one example), but found too many distractions in that direction. In the end he liked the photograph at the top the best, with the sunrise glow in the sky and without the city skyline.
I certainly agree with this choice. It might have been okay to include San Francisco in the background if there weren’t so many other distractions in that direction—namely all the boats. But what originally attracted John to this scene was the poles and their reflections, not the city. The image at the top, the one John preferred, shows that subject cleanly, with minimal distractions and beautiful light.
The silhouetted heron and gull add nice accents—especially that heron, which is perfectly positioned within the frame. It seems like a small thing, but I don’t think I’d like this photograph nearly as much without the birds. I also love how the reflections of the poles look like they’ve been sliced into little pieces near their tips.
By excluding the San Francisco skyline, John avoided a common photographic disease called “Adding On.” This virus infects photographers when they find an interesting subject or scene, but then say, “Oh, look at that—that’s interesting too. Oh, and I like that also. I wonder if I can fit all those things together in one photograph.” The resulting composition becomes cluttered, and the original idea—the inspiration for the photograph—gets lost and forgotten.
The cure is obvious—stick to the original idea. Ask yourself what caught your eye in the first place, then find a way to show that to it’s best advantage. And make your answer to this questions as precise as possible. In other words, instead of saying, “That tree,” say “The shapes of those branches,” or “The color of the moss on the trunk,” or “The way the light is shining through those leaves.”
John did the first part of that process well here. He was most interested in the poles and their reflections, so he concentrated on those, and resisted the temptation—at least for some images—to include the San Francisco skyline in the background. He found a nice balanced arrangement of the poles and reflections that included the birds and the nice pastel colors.
But there is still some background clutter in the top part of the frame. The distant boats and hills break up the clean lines of the poles and detract from power of all that repetition. Of course it’s hard to find a solution for this; to include the tops of the poles without also including the hills and boats would have required a higher vantage point, something that I assume wasn’t available.
But perhaps John could have gone further and asked himself what it was about those poles and reflections that attracted him. I can’t answer that question for him, but for me it’s the lines and patterns created by those poles and their reflections. I could add other things, like the birds, and the reflections of those pole tips, but they’re not essential.
If you say it’s the poles and their reflections that are most interesting, then there’s no way to avoid the background clutter because you have to include each pole in its entirety. But if you say it’s the lines and patterns that are most captivating, then it becomes possible to show those, without including the boats and hills, by cutting off the tops of the poles. I’ve included a couple of crops that do just that.
Is it worth losing the tops of those poles, and the symmetry and balance they provide, to eliminate the background clutter? I think so, but I’m not sure—I’d have to live with these variations for awhile before making a final decision. The cropped versions are more abstract, which will appeal to some people more than others. The lack of a horizon is also somewhat disorienting, which could be intriguing or confusing, depending on your point of view. As always, I’d love to hear your opinions about this.
Crop A
Crop B
But regardless of which version you prefer, my point is that when you’re behind the camera you’ll create more options for yourself if you can be as specific as possible about what attracted you to a scene in the first place. By doing so you may find alternate compositions and approaches and that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
Technically this photograph is well executed—the exposure looks perfect, everything appears to be in focus, and the contrast looks about right. John mentioned that he thought he added a bit too much saturation in this version he posted on Flickr, and in later versions backed off a bit. I’ll concur with that; it’s a fine line, but my first impression was that the saturation was a bit too high and unnatural looking.
An intriguing side note to this image is that John made it just after taking a two-day private workshop in Yosemite with my friend Mike Osborne. John rose early and went to Sausalito to try to take what he had learned from Mike and “do it on my own.” Mike is an excellent teacher who has assisted me in many workshops, and it looks like John learned his lessons well. (For what it’s worth, I didn’t know about this story until after I picked this image for the critique—John does not even have his last name on Flickr, nor would I have recognized it if he did.) Of course I also teach private workshops in Yosemite through The Ansel Adams Gallery.
Thanks John for sharing your image!
As part of being chosen for this week’s critique John will receive a free 16×20 matted print courtesy of the folks at Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques, just upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose. If you’re not a Flickr member yet, joining is free and easy. You’ll have to read and accept the rules for the group before adding images, and please, no more than five photos per person per week. I’ll be posting the next critique in two weeks. Thanks for participating!
