Advice needed: Walking the dog

[StuartRae]

St. Bees on the west coast of Cumbria is about as bleak as it gets, but people still come for a day at the seaside. In its defence it's the start of the famous Coast to Coast walk, and the little cafe on the sea-front sells delicious ice cream.
When I was there a few weeks ago it was a pleasant September day, and yet the north sea was cold and grey and the onshore wind was chilly. The beach was deserted except for a man and woman walking their dogs.

It's not a great shot, but I liked the simplicity, imagining that I could paint it with just three horizontal brush strokes.

I cloned out the woman and second dog and moved the man to the LHS........

........and then cropped to give sand, sea and sky roughly equal thirds.

Or should I have no sky and more sand........

......or less sand and more sky?

Answers on a postcard please.............


Stuart

 

[Ken Tanaka]

Postcard Reply --
Stuart: Images like these are principally "emotives", and are very popular stock shots. They are used as devices to momentarily transport the viewer into a longing for tranquility and personal simplicity. American Express Travel used to almost over-use such scenes in their mailings.

Shot 3 comes closest to useable but has the highlight misplaced in the image center rather than subtly around the guy and dog. You do need the 3-layer composition (sky/water/shore) to make this type of shot work as stock. The composition of shot 4 could work as an expressive art piece but in this genre the guy and dog would be viewed as too sentimental. Look at some of Richard Misrach's large format beach work for another perspective on such scenes.

 

[Asher Kelman]

POST CARD:

Stuart Rae Walking The Dog​

Stu, Great start. Wish you had much more sky to make man diminuative. Maybe use wet sand only. Cheat and make all the lines exactly horizontal! There, a postcard!


LETTER:

Hi Stuart, my good fellow,

It's so tough to write after Ken, he's so damn succinct. Worse, he has authority! Still, I am so fascinated by the truth of this picture. It illustrates the teaching of Ansel Adams, that the photograph is made, not snapped. He meant "made" in the darkroom and that could hours, days, months only to be redone years later with new insights to the "truth", that resides deep in the artists brain and is almost always in hiding. Truth in that sense is plastic, responding to how we feel and what we think is of consequence today.

So how does this apply here? Well, this particular picture must be "made". It is not what the camera saw that's important, but rather the importance you assign to each element, limited in scope only by your whim, fancy, insight, impudence and intuition. This is exactly the process you are working through here. I think you have all the elements. I hope, for this purpose you also snapped other pictures which included more sky. You could ace this is under 30 hours!

Asher

 

[StuartRae]

Gentlemen, thank you for the postcards.

Shot 3 comes closest to useable but has the highlight misplaced in the image center rather than subtly around the guy and dog.

Ken,
Yes, I'd noticed that; I think it can be fixed.

I hope, for this purpose you also snapped other pictures which included more sky.

Asher,
Thanks also for the letter. I've got lots of sky and will experiment. At the very least I can recreate last verse of Mr. Tambourine Man.

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Regards,

Stuart