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In Perspective, Planet: Landscape with moon

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P25 150mm Mamiya UYUNI Bolivia June 2010
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
THe top two images have some surreal potential but I think you need to work the scene a bit more (if possible). There must be other compositions possible. In that top image the moon's just a bit too high (perhaps 10 deg) to be a worthwhile element. The second image has a nice arrangement of natural forms that complement each other but the scene feels cropped and cramped. Also , there's more of that uninteresting white ground than really services the image, and that shadow (?) nearly bisects your frame. A lower camera position --on the ground-- would have solved those problems. The top two images also appear too blue and perhaps a bit underexposed (due to the white ground?).

Isn't it disappointing to see photographic scenes that, you thought, featured a spectacular moon only to find it as just a small spot? (The moon's size to your eye, when it's low, is a natural illusion.) I'm not a landscape snapper but, for the past few years, have tried to avoid placing a moon in an image, preferring instead to capture its unusual light.

So is this the infamous salt flat for which you wanted to lift the camera?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
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Leonardo,

I must admit to having inserted white space between your wonderfully surreal pictures as soon as you posted them bunched together. I hope you don't mind. They seem to show better with some real estate around each one.

Yes, the moons unexpectedly high. I can expect that but the asymmetry needs either to be more extreme or the picture balanced on each side. There's a that special layered look look with an appealing color shift and I feel that this will inspire you in your painting!

Unless you get a 45mm or 55 mm lens, you will be short on the angle of view. You can overlap and stitch! Did you happen to take adjacent shot, by any chance!

Asher
 
Asher. It is just one image and the two details of it.

I think that you can work with it a lot... if possible. The best way is to travel w/out your 8 year old kid so that you have all the time to work with the moon, the desert and other elements.

I think that the most important aspect of serious photography work is to examine your subject exhaustively and I also think that you can't do good photography if you travel as a tourist with wife+kid telling you: "are you done".. --I am never done--...

I have to say that this is not the image I came here to get but that I enjoyed doing it even if every time I see it I realize how bad the composition is.

I captured a collection of images of the salt flat at a very high altitude with the tripod-on-top of LEXUS because I wanted to explore the minimalistic immensity of this unique place. I posted one of the images on my FB wall and got no attention from friends since they probably don, and can't get the images.

Probably it is difficult to do so on line since my idea is to make enlargements where you can feel the space photographed in a way that is probably not possible facing a computer display.
 
THe top two images have some surreal potential but I think you need to work the scene a bit more (if possible). There must be other compositions possible. In that top image the moon's just a bit too high (perhaps 10 deg) to be a worthwhile element. The second image has a nice arrangement of natural forms that complement each other but the scene feels cropped and cramped. Also , there's more of that uninteresting white ground than really services the image, and that shadow (?) nearly bisects your frame. A lower camera position --on the ground-- would have solved those problems. The top two images also appear too blue and perhaps a bit underexposed (due to the white ground?).

Isn't it disappointing to see photographic scenes that, you thought, featured a spectacular moon only to find it as just a small spot? (The moon's size to your eye, when it's low, is a natural illusion.) I'm not a landscape snapper but, for the past few years, have tried to avoid placing a moon in an image, preferring instead to capture its unusual light.

So is this the infamous salt flat for which you wanted to lift the camera?


I did.
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"So is this the infamous salt flat for which you wanted to lift the camera?" Ken Tanaka

Ken. What happened with you my friend. I had this bad feeling after seen the term you used on something I shared here and did not know why. So I looked up the term and I found out ingredients difficult to assimilate.

..EXTREMELY BAD REPUTATION
..DESERVING OF OR CAUSING AN EVIL REPUTATION
..SHAMEFULLY MALIGN
...DETESTABLE

Why is my trip to the salt flats any of that? or where you making a joke? anyway, I am just trying to digest it and may be you can help me.

thanks
leonardo

in·fa·mous
   /ˈɪnfəməs/ Show Spelled[in-fuh-muhs] Show IPA
–adjective
1.
having an extremely bad reputation: an infamous city.
2.
deserving of or causing an evil reputation; shamefully malign; detestable: an infamous deed.
3.
Law .
a.
deprived of certain rights as a citizen, as a consequence of conviction of certain offenses.
b.
of or pertaining to offenses involving such deprivation.
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
My poor choice of words, meant as humorous but obviously misunderstood. But I sometimes forget that our languages may not be the same. Sorry for any offence. It was not intended.

Back to the subject, your rig looks elaborate but I still don't understand what you had in mind...and did not at the time you originally discussed your plans. This is a rig I would expect to use to get a high close-in vantage chasing rhinos across African plains. Infinite nothingness is pretty much the same until you get much, much higher. (At which point you get...alot more infinite nothingness.)

I have to say that this is not the image I came here to get but that I enjoyed doing it...
That's the big point of giving this stuff a try at all, isn't it. You can't drag a mate and kids along for any serious photo work. Better to just enjoy the travel experience and not become obsessively boorish about the snaps. There'll be years for that after the kids forget your name.
 
Ok, no harm done and your infamous remark deleted.

Back to the idea of the high view point.

I have the evidence and need time to assimilate the difference between a normal and elevated point Since I did both, but I am packing for a trip to New York and Nicaragua,...

Doing it was no problem at all, my kid was playing in the salt as if it was the biggest sand box in the world, and the images I got are exactly what I wanted to get.

The place is unique because of its whiteness that goes for hundreds of miles uninterrupted. The experience of climbing the Lexus alone would explain it. My friend did climbed and he said so.

Ansel Adams climbed with his tripod and 8x10 to do the famous moon landscape. Not saying it is the exact same case as mine, but why would he bother to do so?

I took a lot of images similar to this. I have not finished editing them, so this is not the best example in terms of light, but it illustrates what I was -and did- intending to do. A minimalist image with more of the sand than a normal composition. The difference is subtle but it is definitively different to the ones I took at ground level.

My intention was do do as abstract an image as possible, but it was just a personal visual experiment that I felt worth doing.






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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Infinite nothingness is pretty much the same until you get much, much higher. (At which point you get...alot more infinite nothingness.)



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[


Ken,

But here we do not have infinite nothingness. There's the texture of the ground. (I can, of course, add lots of other things in my mind.) The higher one is, the more foreground one can see the structure of, If, in the extreme, one shot from 6 " off the ground, all the foreground would be imaged compressed in one thin layer. So yes, getting up 15 or 20 feet high is a good idea. Even better is to have a T/S lens!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ken Tanaka said:
You can't drag a mate and kids along for any serious photo work. Better to just enjoy the travel experience and not become obsessively boorish about the snaps. There'll be years for that after the kids forget your name.

I learned to take chairs with food and drink. Starve everyone until you get to the location. Then let them eat and you have a good 20 minutes to get your shot. Just don't waste it!

Asher
 
Thank you Asher. And greetings from New York City !. My new Canon EOS 5D2 was waiting for me with my doorman. Came with 24mm f/2.8. But that may be worth a different thread:

Going from Nikon to Canon... Interface learning curve. [also talk about this little lens. It looks so good, small and sharp !!]

Anyway, as usual, you are so correct in you opinion that I think you coud make the best Justice.. je je.

I was editing the images again on my many hours flight La Paz-Miami, and i landed re-affirmed in my choice of going to the infamous (sorry, last time) salt flat with the camera elevator modified tripod.

Now, if familly and schedulle permit, I will try to take 5D2 to my favorite spot here: Staten Island...
 
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