• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Layers

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
If you need many words to describe what your picture means, it doesn't speak enough for itself.

Although this statement represents an ideal, many great pictures benefit from a generous introduction. Here, however, the image needs no explanation. We just take it in and enjoy! Thanks for this delight and respite from serious matters like "How on earth do we elect leaders who are so self-absorbed?"


A view from yesterday in the Allgäu:




Michael,

This is so well constructed. Just covering with one's fingers the tip of the tree at the right border or the several independent, rectangular lower puffs of cloud on the left, dismantles the pictures harmony and balance. Such "necessity" of elements of the photograph attests to the displine and successful craft in choosing what to include in the frame. This is one of the major hurdles that has to be overcome to make outstanding compositions. Being "very charming or interesting" is not enough, unless it's the first Martian photographed or an exclusive shot of an assassination, where all the expectations of trade craft are irrelevant.

Now, like the famous switch-line, of the pitchman**, "Wait, there's more!", much more. Look at the lower dark area. The dimly lit foreground is not merely some useful compositional structure to make the picture work. More then that, it's a fabulous mystery place to explore each time one returns to the photograph.

This work does not require any special training or knowledge of history or relate to one particular culture. The impact, I would think is going to be universal, even if one was brought up in the mountains, desert or the Arctic and had never seen woodlands.

I like such work that is both easy to reach but also has depth that draws one to revisit.

Kudos!

Asher


** in the iconic original trailblazing TV infomercial for the Ginsu Knife)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Michael,

You balance the picture well.

Above, the fabulous layers catch ones attention. The are obvious, beautiful and demand absorbed attention.

Then, gradually we recognize there's a hidden gift to our senses: meandering, detail in the sleepy foreground. We can barely make things out. There are, to be found, many homes and other buildings. But you pointedly avoid making everything equally obvious. So each of us, as a lone observer has to make an effort to grasp the successful habitation in the valleys.

This moves your pictures from merely handsome to stimulating. It's now not just about fabulous scenes we pass, but also holds aspects of how we settle into the landscape.

Asher
 
Last edited:

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Michael,

I must learn from your discipline to not over explain our images by making everything "equal opportunity" important, as if there was some social overnight committee demanding we equalize all picture elements.

Unfortunately, image editing programs may have given us bad habits, so that the lioness hidden in the grass by the waterhole, is shown as clearly as the wildebeest ignorantly lapping at the water's edge.

Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Asher,

When working with film, dodging and burning were required to recover individual areas in a picture.
This process was not used for every print, but only then when it made sense for the picture, as you have to cut the mask and use it correctly during exposure.

Digital photography has changed the rules. Things that required more attention and preparation before can now be simply adjusted applying the right corrections in your favourite raw-development and image editing tool.
The increasingly large dynamic range of the newer sensors makes pictures easy that required deep technical knowledge before.
This ease of use of the new technologies makes their application at every picture attractive and their use is frequently indiscriminate to achieve a 'technically perfect' picture in every possible case.

I try to show what I saw.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
...............
This ease of use of the new technologies makes their application at every picture attractive and their use is frequently indiscriminate to achieve a 'technically perfect' picture in every possible case.

Unfortunately, Michael, this as a generalization is pretty true of most of the "wondrous" Photoshopping folk are proud of.



I try to show what I saw.


That is what makes your picture draw us in. We at first miss totally the dense secrets in the shadows. But then our suspicious physiology does a more careful "last sweep" for security and we discover the treasures that are always there in the shadows.

In a way, this is a metaphor for "modernity". Everyone and everything is presented for maximum attention. So shapes and colors are peaked with little nuance and variation in order to grab the most attention away from competing signs, fashions and poses.

I commend your attention to this recognition of value in having us wonder what's there and enter your offered world/iuniverse to explore.

We do not run any courses here, but I myself learn a lot for the best in other photographer's pictures. I feel my own work has benefited from everyone's here. Without exaggeration, this, example, of maintaining the shadows, however, is one of the most important lessons one can glean here at OPF.

Consider, it doesn't matter much which lens or camera sensor one uses, this is a rule better than "frame tight and crop close" or don't center the subject, or the rules of thirds and the like.

Illuminating everything takes away the drama and unfairness of light.

So thanks again for your stellar contribution by example!


Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Asher,

Maybe it is just my way to see, but there is some history to add.

For me it is interesting to learn from painters.

For landscape and especially the presence of dark and bright parts it is worthwhile to look at the works of Caspar David Friedrich or J. M. W. Turner.

Lyonel Feininger and Andreas Feininger should also be named- Father painter - son photographer.

There are more examples - I would be interesting to see some additions to the above mentioned.

Best regards,
Michael
 
Top