Let's talk about "Seeing" and how to improve it.

[Cherry_F]

Good thoughts.

I'm no painter myself, but I learned a bit reading art critics books about paintings. There are some paintings I do see quite differently after reading (dodge and burn after reading? sorry for this bad pun)

About the rule of thirds: you're right, it's more subtle than "don't put the horizon in the middle". This rule had a purpose, it came from paintings (Renaissance if I'm correct) and was a sort of convention, in order to make the picture easy to immediately "grasp" by the beholder. As we in the western civilizations are fed by this culture, we came used to it and we prefer photos that abide by this convention. (Of course, the rule of thirds also corresponds to a "standard" vision, which helps quite a lot). Some art critics pointed out that this convention did not rule in other civilizations, and if we look at japanese and chinese paintings, this sounds somewhat correct to me.

Interested to know what you think. Please, continue dumping your brain!

Regards, Cherry

 

[Cherry_F]

I like your b&w image better than the colour one, but I'm not sure why!

Same for me!

B&W usually adds some dramatic effect ... of course in this case I wanted to show how people who live in this spendid environment do not care about dumping some wreck alongside. Converting to B&W emphasizes the drama, so to speak...

But there's also another interpretation, wrecks can have their own beauty... this car for sure has had a long life and deserves to spend her last days in a peaceful place!

Anyway, I hanged the B&W version on a wall and I like to contemplate it from time to time.

 

[creative edge]

Rick,
Great post...
I agree about getting low for a different perspective. This was taken in Arches about 3 weeks ago, right after a rain storm.

--

http://www.michaelfullana.com

 

[GCam]

I spend a lot of time photographing waterfalls and cascades but in this occasion it hadn't rained for weeks, the waterflow was very low and the light and visibility was poor. I was also in locations that I hadn't photographed before. I decided to try and produce a series of images where bright water was surrounded by dark areas thus containing the water. I spent 2 days on this and by the end I was seeing likely images quickly in the 3 small streams that I visited. The 3 streams were all in deep wooded gorges. In the end I produced 7 images that I was happy with. Since stopping this small project I still produce images like this but no longer go looking for them. I will not bore you with 7 images just enough to show you the idea. Ken

The "fall" in this image is not much more than 1ft high

Middle Black Clough, Derbyshire, England

Padley Gorge, Yorkshire, England

Wyming Brook, Yorkshire, England

Beautiful series, mindful of a hit song from the fifties: "Little Things Mean a Lot." gc

 

[Damnerd]

--
Don
Downloading re-editing/re-touching of my images is prohibited without express permission.
Do you walk into an art exhibit or walk up to an artist at his easel and say "let me see a brush, I'll fix it for you"?
That is ludicrous.
http://www.damnerd.com

 

[NeatPhotoStuff]

I spend a lot of time photographing waterfalls and cascades but in this occasion it hadn't rained for weeks, the waterflow was very low and the light and visibility was poor. I was also in locations that I hadn't photographed before. I decided to try and produce a series of images where bright water was surrounded by dark areas thus containing the water. I spent 2 days on this and by the end I was seeing likely images quickly in the 3 small streams that I visited. The 3 streams were all in deep wooded gorges. In the end I produced 7 images that I was happy with. Since stopping this small project I still produce images like this but no longer go looking for them. I will not bore you with 7 images just enough to show you the idea. Ken

The "fall" in this image is not much more than 1ft high

Middle Black Clough, Derbyshire, England

Love this shot! Usually I would prefer a bit more detail in the deep shadows, but I think it works well here to simplify the image. Great work.

 

[Peter Del]

Thanks Cherry F for your kind comment.

Peter Del

 

[Newbie Phewbie]

Do you have a good book recommendation on this subject for a lay person - ie. not a painter?

The subject of how the human eye notices and follows images is fascinating. I remember reading somewhere that our eyes (most of us) move from the left of the frame to the right. And artists can exploit that.

 

[Cherry_F]

Do you have a good book recommendation on this subject for a lay person - ie. not a painter?

The subject of how the human eye notices and follows images is fascinating. I remember reading somewhere that our eyes (most of us) move from the left of the frame to the right. And artists can exploit that.

I read different opinions about that. It could be typical of western countries habit due to the fact that we write from left to right...

In his famous book, 'the photographer's eye', Michael Freeman gives some examples of how the eye explores an image, and he shows that the way we read it is dependent about the composition, the shadows, ...

 

[kaphinga]

Do you have a good book recommendation on this subject for a lay person - ie. not a painter?

Let me think on that a little.

The subject of how the human eye notices and follows images is fascinating. I remember reading somewhere that our eyes (most of us) move from the left of the frame to the right. And artists can exploit that.

As Cherry_f mentioned, in the west, where we read from left to right, that we do tend to read images from left to right, but it might be a cultural thing.

 

[kaphinga]

Good thoughts....just remember negative space is not always negative space!!!;-)

The idea is that every part in the frame is important, not just the subject.

 

[kaphinga]

Good thoughts.

I'm no painter myself, but I learned a bit reading art critics books about paintings. There are some paintings I do see quite differently after reading (dodge and burn after reading? sorry for this bad pun)

About the rule of thirds: you're right, it's more subtle than "don't put the horizon in the middle". This rule had a purpose, it came from paintings (Renaissance if I'm correct) and was a sort of convention, in order to make the picture easy to immediately "grasp" by the beholder. As we in the western civilizations are fed by this culture, we came used to it and we prefer photos that abide by this convention. (Of course, the rule of thirds also corresponds to a "standard" vision, which helps quite a lot). Some art critics pointed out that this convention did not rule in other civilizations, and if we look at japanese and chinese paintings, this sounds somewhat correct to me.

Interested to know what you think. Please, continue dumping your brain!

Regards, Cherry

The idea is to never have 50/50 of any design element because they fight each other and the viewer can't tell what's important. Of course, there are times when one might do that intentionally, but, generally speaking, it's confusing.

For Japanese painting, it's worth taking a look at the concept of Notan. (I am in a hurry right now and can't go into it.)

 

[bartjeej]

Do you have a good book recommendation on this subject for a lay person - ie. not a painter?

The subject of how the human eye notices and follows images is fascinating. I remember reading somewhere that our eyes (most of us) move from the left of the frame to the right. And artists can exploit that.

I read different opinions about that. It could be typical of western countries habit due to the fact that we write from left to right...

In his famous book, 'the photographer's eye', Michael Freeman gives some examples of how the eye explores an image, and he shows that the way we read it is dependent about the composition, the shadows, ...

In general, I'd recommend anyone interested in composition to read that book. It does a great job of explaining the mechanisms behind why certain images work and others don't, so it goes much further than a simple formulaic approach.

 

[Newbie Phewbie]

Thanks. I'll check that out.

 

[Gloomy1]

Thank you for the comment. I used to lift shadows to produce detail but have mostly stopped or greatly reduced this. With this series of images I have deliberately dropped the shadows to make the waterflow pop more. Ken

 

[rick decker]

Very nice and very unusual. How was the traffic? I am assuming that the road expansion out of Moab to Arches was finished some time ago. I was there last spring and everything was a mess - 45 minutes from thepark to the north end of town. But it was needed. I will probably go back in early March as Moab is one of my favorites although I hate the drive to and from Las Vegas.

BTW I looked at your landscape stuff. And fahion! Great work including post processing.

 

[creative edge]

Very nice and very unusual. How was the traffic? I am assuming that the road expansion out of Moab to Arches was finished some time ago. I was there last spring and everything was a mess - 45 minutes from thepark to the north end of town. But it was needed. I will probably go back in early March as Moab is one of my favorites although I hate the drive to and from Las Vegas.

BTW I looked at your landscape stuff. And fahion! Great work including post processing.

The road expansion seemed finished as I did not encounter any traffic. We love Moab and had a great time. This time of the year, the crowds are way down. We did a big circle starting at Vegas and ending there. Kanab, Moab MV and then LV.

Oh, and thanks for the compliment on my work.

 

[PHXAZCRAIG]

I think that more often than not you can justify putting a car in a picture. And yours works fine. BTW I saw something somewhere in your profile or whatever about scuba diving... are you doing u/w photography?

Yes, I do u/w photography. (And starting to do some video now). In fact, it's my most-preferred type of shooting. Love to dive, love photography, love to combine the two. It presents certain challenges that make getting a good image more rewarding.

There are many many times when I'm diving and trying to 'see' a shot. It's a lot harder with wide angle than macro. One of the fun things to do (for me) is to manufacture a shot in post-processing by cropping, though I generally have that in mind when I take it. Sometimes I take a shot just to see what it will look like in post (the strobe lighting being completely different than what the eye sees without it). And then if I find something of interest I know to look harder at it in the future. Basically I got bored, took some test shots and then discovered something of interest.

For example, plate corals. These round corals are about 4-6 inches in diameter and look completely forgettable as you fin by them. But if you get a close-up (macro lens) and look into them, they can be absolutely fascinating. Plus they don't move so are often a convenient target when nothing else interesting is around. Now I generally take a shot when I pass one because it may be a nice shot in post. These are not things that look cool in natural lighting, generally.

Here are some examples. They should be looked at in full-screen mode on a large monitor, preferably.

Artichoke coral (Roatan)

Ridge Cactus Coral (Roatan)

Details in another type of plate coral (Roatan)

And, to keep sort of within the thread, I've thought about how to show depth in an u/w image. Aside from actual 'depth'. To show depth, one needs details in near, middle and far distances, and probably a sense of scale as well. The problem in u/w is that you generally don't get a lot of 'far' due to visibility concerns. But the whole thought could be scaled down to a smaller level. Just hard to do, like lots of u/w stuff. I'm going to give this some thought for my next dive trip.

Depth in an Image - Examples?

Sometimes you stack one subject over another.

A pair of Pedersen Cleaning Shrimp in Roatan

Here is a shot that I absolutely love because of the effect is has in drawing your eye around the image. There is stuff going on near, middle and far.

3 minute safety stop in Jamaica

-
Phoenix Arizona Craig
www.cjcphoto.net
"I miss the days when I was nostalgic."

 

[PHXAZCRAIG]

Good stuff.

 

[rick decker]

Nice work..thanks for the shots