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Striking Sunsets, Getting beyond Postcard-Pretty or Merely Sentimental!

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Noosa Harbour, Winter Sunset

Gelatin-silver photograph on Fomabrom Variant 111 VC FB, image area 16.3cm x 21.4cm, from a Tmax 100 negative exposed in a Mamiya RB67 camera fitted with a 50mm f4.5 lens and #25 red filter.

I did my last serious colour photography in 1977 and I don't feel like going back to it even for a gorgeous sunset. Whether a sunset is a subject that can be done with merit on monochrome materials is a moot point. I happen to think so.

I thought it would be impossible to capture a sunset in black and white, without shadows or including the setting sun itself, at least partially. But in this picture you have used everything else to bring out the effect so wonderfully. The bright reflection to the left, the differential illumination of the clouds, silhouetted leaves, may be there is more. I can almost smell the evening!

Reginald
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
What an incredible effect! It's like the ball is about to drop off from the sky.

Reginald
Reginald,

I liked your comments so much and wished I had thought of it myself! Well I found this:


This one is about color...radiant, warm, glowing color.

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ease me gently into the night: chris calohan​


"Chris,

I have never seen anything like this. The sun appears to be dropping from the sky. This is dramatic and unique and I like it. Certainly not just another sunset nor sentimental!

Asher"​

So I did think of the sun falling out of the sky, but when you wrote it, I thought you were brilliant! Thanks for jogging my memory. This is beautiful work and shows that there is a lot more creativity, even in such beauty as a sunset which we have seen thousands of times before!

Asher
 
Reginald,

I liked your comments so much and wished I had thought of it myself! Well I found this:



"Chris,

I have never seen anything like this. The sun appears to be dropping from the sky. This is dramatic and unique and I like it. Certainly not just another sunset nor sentimental!

Asher"​

So I did think of the sun falling out of the sky, but when you wrote it, I thought you were brilliant! Thanks for jogging my memory. This is beautiful work and shows that there is a lot more creativity, even in such beauty as a sunset which we have seen thousands of times before!

Asher

Asher,
Isn't it interesting that the picture has evoked identical thoughts, down to the use of words, on two different individuals separated by geography, culture, background and what not? I think Chris has demonstrated the power of communicating through a picture. Had I seen your post when I made my comments, I might have altered my words just to avoid looking like a 'copy-cat'!

Reginald
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Asher,
Isn't it interesting that the picture has evoked identical thoughts, down to the use of words, on two different individuals separated by geography, culture, background and what not? I think Chris has demonstrated the power of communicating through a picture. Had I seen your post when I made my comments, I might have altered my words just to avoid looking like a 'copy-cat'!

Reginald



14250560076_2a69a4c559_b_d.jpg


ease me gently into the night: chris calohan​



Actually, it's perhaps not so surprising that one could come up with the similar wording from two such disparate backgrounds. Let me venture one explanation.

All cultures share commonalities in the fundamental archetypical metaphors of "up", "down" and the fixed necessity of our sun's singular importance in its prescribed regular journeys across the sky. All societies "depend" for orientation of the sun always remaining in the sky. We know that almost all other non living objects in the air, if free, will fall to the ground and will remain there unless lifted up somehow. So the sun appearing to escape itself from its position in the sky is startling. For almost any so-detached object, high above us, the consequence is obvious: it will fall! We actually have little choice in these interpretations.

What is even more amazing is that, likely as not, this feeling of "the sun dropping out of the sky" is likely to be evoked, no matter the native tongue of the observer, because the archaic master metaphors, (on which all language is based), are the same!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
From a balcony in Los Angeles:



Sunset from Balcony DSF1820__DSF1833-14_900.jpg


Asher Kelman: Sunset From A Balcony
Fuji GFX 32-64mm
36mm 1/250, f8, ISO 3200
14 shots stitched Autopano Giga
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I love the peace and rich tranquility, nicolas!





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You'd also win for showing all the gold one could imagine, floating in the ocean!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Very dramatic image, Peter. That sky is so rich and holy, that we'd expect charritode with angels flying out.

I would love to have more with a fisherman or woman in the water or who knows, a crock too!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
On land for a change…

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Château de Reignac, from my series "Three châteaux in Winter"​

Almost abstract!

I thought these were tribal dancers, as I have seen filling a valley in Africa! That in a way what vines are, part of a nation's culture. The vines must dance with the hill, sunshine and fog that clings to the ground in the early morning!

Asher
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Almost abstract!

I thought these were tribal dancers, as I have seen filling a valley in Africa! That in a way what vines are, part of a nation's culture. The vines must dance with the hill, sunshine and fog that clings to the ground in the early morning!

Asher

Asher, you're a great Poet!
I appreciate and like a lot your vision of my pic!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Driving at Sunset in Avenue of The Stars, Century City. West is on the left!



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Fuji GFX 32-64 mm
64mm, 1/350 sec, F 11.0, ISO 3200
Processed from RAW in Photoshop CC
No added filters



Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Otherwise, it would be un sunrise… ; )

Nice shot and magnificent brilliance BTW : !


You are a nautical genius, Nicolas!

One thing I have discovered about the RAW files from the Fuji GFX is that they require all the "Clarity" setting in Adobe Camera RAW you can give them! They also need to be dehazed first. I plan to follow your guidance and check LR ,but also will try a custom Capture One profile and workaround for Capture One via an intermediate DNG file!

Asher
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
You are a nautical genius, Nicolas!

One thing I have discovered about the RAW files from the Fuji GFX is that they require all the "Clarity" setting in Adobe Camera RAW you can give them! They also need to be dehazed first. I plan to follow your guidance and check LR ,but also will try a custom Capture One profile and workaround for Capture One via an intermediate DNG file!

Asher

I doubt that Capture One allows to work on your file, even in DNG format!

I doubt also that using clarity @ 100 % + dehaze would bring no halo seen at full size!
It would mean the your lens is a dog! Which I do not believe…
 
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