Posted by Josh Couts on March 28, 2007 at 12:34 PM
Good find. I really like the ripples in the foreground sand and the location of shadows relative to the composition.
If it were my own, I might crop out some of the sky, maybe just right above the one area of cloud that stretches most of the way across the page, as well as maybe cropping up from the bottom to at least the area where the shadows cease to be a solid color down at the bottom right, to put more emphasis on the yucca. That would also put your shadows line, as well as the line where sand meets sky on roughly the upper and lower 1/3rds. Good compositional placement of the yucca on right 1/3rd. With the direction of the sand ripples, it definitely fits best there.
Could maybe use a pass of noise reduction on the sky (as you probably know, B&W conversion would point out more of the noise than the color version probably lets our eyes see). I'm seeing a lot of blues in the shadows on my screen, mainly in the bottom right corner and the shadow of the yucca itself...a quick pass of color desaturation would probably fix that though. I would have loved to have seen a B&W version with a fully polarized sky, if it was possible based on the sun's position. I saw the same blues in the shadows of "Dawn Curves" and "Solitude" so it may be something you've left in intentionally.
I've been attending the "Marc Adamus school of critique", so to say, so my apologies if this seems a bit outside the box of norm. But, he raised an interesting point one day that we all post our photos to try to improve them and receive input. I think he got tired of everyone being so wowed by his images that they forgot to actually give him feedback or challenge his opinion on anything. So I felt I would offer my best attempt at an actual critique, based on mistakes I still make every day with my own camera and post-processing. Is there anything you wish you would have done differently with this image in retrospect?
Posted by Nat Coalson on March 28, 2007 at 1:13 PM
Josh-
Great crit - I really appreciate your taking the time to do this. I wish that more image posts on the forum would garner thoughtful critique in the interest of helping everyone become better photograpehrs. It's a lot more useful than "great shot", "love the colors" etc. but I realize not everyone can (or wants to) take the time to dissect an image to figure out how it might be better.
Your points are well thought out and well stated, and I find a lot of your ideas to be valid (though many reflect personal creative/design choices - which is just as helpful).
To address your specific points:
My goal of this image is to not only show the yucca, but its place within its environment. White Sands is a place of vast land and even vaster (?) skies. I used many different crops (both in-camera and in-computer) and for me, this one works the best because it gives a "spacious" feeling, and helps convey the idea of the plant reaching for the sky.
The placement of the horizon in the image also has meaning for me. Graphically, I like the way the line of the yucca ties the sky and sand together. It reminds me of a safety pin holding pieces of fabric together. The yucca itself also reminds me of a hatpin or a fancy toothpick sticking into something (I know, lots of metaphor... that's the way I think.)
Also re: the sky - this is fully polarized. The angle of the sun wouldn't let it go any darker.
Re: noise in the sky - I don't see it, but I'm using a CRT and I know the contrast of an LCD reveals more noise (I've had comments about noisy skies before but I just don't see it in the file... possibly a JPG artifact.)
Re: the blues in the shadows - as you noted, this is the same in the other images from this shoot, because this is really true to the scene. The sands are so white that in full shade they reflect the sky, making them very blue. I did not want to reduce this effect.
I like your idea of b/w on this one and will definitely try it.
Again, thanks very much for your critique. I hope that some of my responses illuminate my personal creative choices, and that anyone reading these posts will be encouraged to take a smiliar approach to understanding what's going on within the frames of their own photographs. The main idea is to be careful and deliberate in the way the photo is composed, and evaluating after the fact can be a great help for future shooting.
When I first showed friends my white sands shots from a couple years back, I got similar comments regarding the colors, especially the blues. That really is what it looks like. The pastels at sunset are equally represented in the sand, making for images that some will find to appear unnatural or at least unusual. But "unusal" is a good word to describe White Sands!
Springboarding off the discussion above... I think the deeper blue shadows at the bottom are well-complimented by the blue sky, creating a balanced feel overall. The comp or angle of view works for me here - the expansive feel of the scene captures the essence of White Sands very well.
I have similar shots from my trip - some with the yucca completely below the sand/sky horizon and some where the yucaa bridges the two. I think both can work well; in this case, I like the placement for a couple of reasons: 1) I like the balance of blue shadow and blue sky, so I personally wouldn't crop anything; with that established, having the yucca bridge the two keeps the image balanced. Higher or lower and the scene gets top or bottom heavy. 2) I think the placement emphasizes the height or "reaching" effect of the yucca, adding a little drama. The images where I have the yucca completely below the horizon appear somewhat static.
Softer light would benefit the scene (relative to my personal tastes), but that's probably getting greedy - it can't always be like in your Desert Survivor's shot, which is exceptional. Very nice collection of work from there by the way. I see you were there during full moon. We camped on the dunes for 3 nights during full moon. I can't think of a better time to experience this place - makes a fascinating place even moreso!
I haven't been fortunate enough to personally visit the white sands, so I was unaware of the phenomenon of the blues in that area. If it is a natural phenomenon, then I would definitely keep it that way as you have. New Mexico is indeed known for its skies...I just didn't find the particular sky at that moment of capture to be all that invigorating as is, up to the very top.
I think what I enjoy the most about the composition of the sands and shadows themselves is the way that the ridgeline and the line where the shadows begin almost parallel one another all the way across the scene. That's largely why I suggested cropping the sky just above the cloud that stretches nearly all the way across, because the top edge of it, nearly perfectly compliments the other two in parallel, adding yet another layer of depth. But, above that, the cloud going at the 40 degree angle from visual SE to NW kind of threw that off for me. When I cropped it at that location, the parallel ridges led my eyes more through the image and the depth was brought out. But, my eyes are just one set out of billions.
I think I agree with Rick on the sky and shadows balancing one another out...we just disagree on proportion. I think the sky is a little top heavy for my taste, but to each their own.
I do agree with Rick that softer light might have benefitted the scene, but I don't know how far out you were in the sands, if you were camping, or if it was feasible for you to be in that spot closer to dusk. Who knows if the shadows would have even been that noticeable at a lower angle of sun, had there been a 30 foot ridge behind you blocking the light. Those are the details that only you know.
Posted by Jack Brauer on April 3, 2007 at 10:27 PM
Discussion
8 repliesMore of this body of work
If it were my own, I might crop out some of the sky, maybe just right above the one area of cloud that stretches most of the way across the page, as well as maybe cropping up from the bottom to at least the area where the shadows cease to be a solid color down at the bottom right, to put more emphasis on the yucca. That would also put your shadows line, as well as the line where sand meets sky on roughly the upper and lower 1/3rds. Good compositional placement of the yucca on right 1/3rd. With the direction of the sand ripples, it definitely fits best there.
Could maybe use a pass of noise reduction on the sky (as you probably know, B&W conversion would point out more of the noise than the color version probably lets our eyes see). I'm seeing a lot of blues in the shadows on my screen, mainly in the bottom right corner and the shadow of the yucca itself...a quick pass of color desaturation would probably fix that though. I would have loved to have seen a B&W version with a fully polarized sky, if it was possible based on the sun's position. I saw the same blues in the shadows of "Dawn Curves" and "Solitude" so it may be something you've left in intentionally.
I've been attending the "Marc Adamus school of critique", so to say, so my apologies if this seems a bit outside the box of norm. But, he raised an interesting point one day that we all post our photos to try to improve them and receive input. I think he got tired of everyone being so wowed by his images that they forgot to actually give him feedback or challenge his opinion on anything. So I felt I would offer my best attempt at an actual critique, based on mistakes I still make every day with my own camera and post-processing. Is there anything you wish you would have done differently with this image in retrospect?
Great crit - I really appreciate your taking the time to do this. I wish that more image posts on the forum would garner thoughtful critique in the interest of helping everyone become better photograpehrs. It's a lot more useful than "great shot", "love the colors" etc. but I realize not everyone can (or wants to) take the time to dissect an image to figure out how it might be better.
Your points are well thought out and well stated, and I find a lot of your ideas to be valid (though many reflect personal creative/design choices - which is just as helpful).
To address your specific points:
My goal of this image is to not only show the yucca, but its place within its environment. White Sands is a place of vast land and even vaster (?) skies. I used many different crops (both in-camera and in-computer) and for me, this one works the best because it gives a "spacious" feeling, and helps convey the idea of the plant reaching for the sky.
The placement of the horizon in the image also has meaning for me. Graphically, I like the way the line of the yucca ties the sky and sand together. It reminds me of a safety pin holding pieces of fabric together. The yucca itself also reminds me of a hatpin or a fancy toothpick sticking into something (I know, lots of metaphor... that's the way I think.)
Also re: the sky - this is fully polarized. The angle of the sun wouldn't let it go any darker.
Re: noise in the sky - I don't see it, but I'm using a CRT and I know the contrast of an LCD reveals more noise (I've had comments about noisy skies before but I just don't see it in the file... possibly a JPG artifact.)
Re: the blues in the shadows - as you noted, this is the same in the other images from this shoot, because this is really true to the scene. The sands are so white that in full shade they reflect the sky, making them very blue. I did not want to reduce this effect.
I like your idea of b/w on this one and will definitely try it.
Again, thanks very much for your critique. I hope that some of my responses illuminate my personal creative choices, and that anyone reading these posts will be encouraged to take a smiliar approach to understanding what's going on within the frames of their own photographs. The main idea is to be careful and deliberate in the way the photo is composed, and evaluating after the fact can be a great help for future shooting.
I love both the photo and the conversation about the photo. Very educational!
When I first showed friends my white sands shots from a couple years back, I got similar comments regarding the colors, especially the blues. That really is what it looks like. The pastels at sunset are equally represented in the sand, making for images that some will find to appear unnatural or at least unusual. But "unusal" is a good word to describe White Sands!
Springboarding off the discussion above... I think the deeper blue shadows at the bottom are well-complimented by the blue sky, creating a balanced feel overall. The comp or angle of view works for me here - the expansive feel of the scene captures the essence of White Sands very well.
I have similar shots from my trip - some with the yucca completely below the sand/sky horizon and some where the yucaa bridges the two. I think both can work well; in this case, I like the placement for a couple of reasons: 1) I like the balance of blue shadow and blue sky, so I personally wouldn't crop anything; with that established, having the yucca bridge the two keeps the image balanced. Higher or lower and the scene gets top or bottom heavy. 2) I think the placement emphasizes the height or "reaching" effect of the yucca, adding a little drama. The images where I have the yucca completely below the horizon appear somewhat static.
Softer light would benefit the scene (relative to my personal tastes), but that's probably getting greedy - it can't always be like in your Desert Survivor's shot, which is exceptional. Very nice collection of work from there by the way. I see you were there during full moon. We camped on the dunes for 3 nights during full moon. I can't think of a better time to experience this place - makes a fascinating place even moreso!
Guy
I think what I enjoy the most about the composition of the sands and shadows themselves is the way that the ridgeline and the line where the shadows begin almost parallel one another all the way across the scene. That's largely why I suggested cropping the sky just above the cloud that stretches nearly all the way across, because the top edge of it, nearly perfectly compliments the other two in parallel, adding yet another layer of depth. But, above that, the cloud going at the 40 degree angle from visual SE to NW kind of threw that off for me. When I cropped it at that location, the parallel ridges led my eyes more through the image and the depth was brought out. But, my eyes are just one set out of billions.
I think I agree with Rick on the sky and shadows balancing one another out...we just disagree on proportion. I think the sky is a little top heavy for my taste, but to each their own.
I do agree with Rick that softer light might have benefitted the scene, but I don't know how far out you were in the sands, if you were camping, or if it was feasible for you to be in that spot closer to dusk. Who knows if the shadows would have even been that noticeable at a lower angle of sun, had there been a 30 foot ridge behind you blocking the light. Those are the details that only you know.