Critique Request - Sunset Drama

Alan,

This is a beautiful image. It works really well in B&W. It covers a great range of B&W shades. Sky and clouds are well balanced by under-sky part of the image.

I like the most the composition of this image - specifically how a leading line and a diagonal works together. Both a leading line and a diagonal are very pronounced. A tidal pool leads the eye off center and off the focal point in clouds. But as soon as this leading line reaches the left-top to bottom-right diagonal of the image you goes immediately to a focal point - an opening in cloud formations, which is on this diagonal.

I would not change anything in this great B&W work.

Alan

I agree with Yuri - this is a great B&W work -- though the very very small figures on the left are way too small from my point of view to have any effect on this image - either for better or worse. What I really like is something very unusual about this pix -- though the sky and clouds are very contrasty (implying very clear crisp even cold weather) the water is very softly silvery - the contrast is low and there are many fine gradations of gray in it -- its very rare to have soft dreamy water and bright contrasty clouds and I love this about this image -- its very very subtile, but it works magic on the viewer -- because one of the very few times one gets that combination is when there is an impending squall coming - a very very fast change in the weather, so the water is telling what still is, calm and peaceful - but the sky is already informing you that conditions will change very quickly.

And no I wouldn't change a thing about this image either!

Alan

Btw -- one thing that really really works for this image is the extreme wide angle you chose for the shot -- because this makes the river spread across the entire bottom of the pix in the foreground -- it is this quality that makes the contrast between river (there enough of it now) and the sky so pronounced -- if this weren't extreme wide angle, we would still see the "silvery softness" of the river water, but it wouldn't be predominant enough to work against the large expanse of sky, and would just " be there" but wouldn't make the very strong statement it does this way!

Again congratulations -- this is a pix I'd be very glad to have taken!!

Fantastic bw image. Great composition. Great shades. If I would change anything, it could be to crop a bit from the sky. But, the image is also fantastic just like it is.

Thanks for the input. Following review of comments I have re-evaluated and cropped the image. I think this speaks to Ken & Johanna's suggestions as to get closer to the individuals and better compose the sky. I do prefer this image so thank you for that direction

How do others feel - improvement?

Alan,

Those are two different images. Both are very good.

I prefer an original one as it has more drama in it - It looks like clouds over a diagonal with a hole in clouds - those upper clouds are attacking the below ones. That feeling is lost in the cropped version.

Alan

I think #2 is way better because to me this shot is about the contrast/balance of the water and sky!

However if one were interested in making this pix about the fantastic sky ( on its own it is quite interesting and dramatic) - then I would crop out the water in the foreground - cropping about 2/3 of the way up to the figures -- leaving just enough water to have some "ground" in the skyscape. This would be an interesting pix, but different.

And finally a third version is possible -- cropping most of the sky, and most of the water, leaving a thin sliver of both, and cropping away a lot on the right too so one has a very detailed close up of the figures in a very long thin kind of "panoramic" view of just a close up of the figures with a tiny strip of sand/water below them and a tiny strip of sky above. I said in my original comment that the figures were too small to have much effect on the pix -- but that was in the original -- this could be a pix just about them, if one wanted it to be -- and it too would be very interesting

So frankly Alan, I think you have three possible very different, and all very good, versions of this -- and I would show and post all 3 on FAA

Ken, you strike a hard bargain!!!! I have tried cropping the lower section thus adding more emphasis to the dramatic sky - I'd be interested to hear what version appeals to other group members.

I did try severe cropping of both sky and land as suggested but whilst OK felt the image lost its appeal.

Alan

Personally, I like image # 2 best -- but I think image #3 is also a very good shot-- just emphasizing something else (clouds and sky) As someone who has shot hundreds of pix of clouds, I like this shot a lot too.

And what I was talking about in image "3 -- just coming in very very close on the people -- makes this a totally different shot as well. But when I went to the page on your site where the first image was and looked at it much larger and in detail, I noticed that there is an interesting dynamic with just the people be the waters edge -- the "father & son" group on the left and then the 3 peope who are crossing the water further in the distance -- and I found that interesting all by itself -- but in order for that to be valid you have to come in very very lose on them stripping out most of the sky and even the water in the foreground that is not near them -- leaving just this thin sliver of a shot of the people and the sand/water right where they are standing -- and it becomes a shot about peope at the beach rather than a shot about nature

Hi Alan

I like the original version best as it seems to have the best placement of the many diagonals in this shot.
My eye is, however, drawn to the point on the horizontwo-thirds to the right, and there, or close by, is where i'd like to see something - it's a pity there wasn't a sailboat passing. The people in the shot don't draw my eye to them.
I'm also wondering whether it might look better with some deeper blacks below the horizon, but I find it hard to tell with such a small image - can I suggest that images for review be posted at maximum size (I think it's 750 horizontal)?

Werner

I've found by experience that the best way to comment on images posted here is not to use the posted image itself for critique, but to click it and go to the image in much larger size on the artist's site -- I didn't originally do this and missed a lot of details in members works for critique.

Alan
your image is fantastic. And I like the take 2, where you cropped a bit from the sky, but not at the bottom. The balance and the harmony is awesome!

Thanks all. It is wonderful to hear all these comments and as in the past interesting that different artists have different preferences. I may just have to post 2 versions (I'm undecided which I prefer myself).

On Werner's request/Ken's suggestion for a larger display - I typically right click on the thumbnail and select 'open in new tab' as this allow me to view the image and flip/flop back to the critique. Opening in another window is another option if you have dual monitors as it allows the image on one monitor with your critique post on the other

Does that satisfy you size request Werner, or do you know a way to make larger?

BTW - sometimes I grab a screen capture of an FAA posted image,save and use the Windows 10 Photo app to test cropping ideas etc. This is a good/quick tool if you want to perform basic editing tests.

@Ken @Alan - I just hadn't thought of opening up a larger version in another tab or window. However, to me it just seems so much easier to post a large image in the first place - particulaly easier if you need to flip between images to compare them. I don't have dual screens - my main machine is my laptop!

To make the image larger one just needs to edit the bit of html code that you normally paste into the message from the "embed" window.

eg for the Take 3 pic above, edit the "250" to "750" and the (in this case) "147" to "441" (3x147).

Werner

Thank you for showing how to make the embedded image larger!

I don't know if this will work on an IPad, because of the way in which I need to save and change the original embed info ,but I 'm trying it here with one of my images

[edited post] -- ok the embed info change does work from an I pad as seen below -- but I think it also makes clear that Warner's suggestion is a good one! Other groups don't want this because of the hundreds of pix posted to each thread making it time consuming to get to the bottom of the thread -- but we don't have this problem here at the moment!

Alan, please excuse this post being extraneous to the rest of your pix's commentary thread -- I didn't want to start a whole new discussion about it -- jut test it out -- because I find thevWerner's idea to just post a bigger pix to be a good one, as we all can see in his other critique thread