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Rural stretch.
Mar 15, 2014 14:41:20 #
The clouds had been catching my eye as I drove along, then I came to this bit and the hills caught my eye. Then I came to this track and it caught my eye. Then I got out of my van and the strainer post caught my eye. Then I went and did a minniev and tried to get everything in frame.
I'm left wondering if it's just too much of a stretch to get a distant background together with close foreground stuff.
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I'm left wondering if it's just too much of a stretch to get a distant background together with close foreground stuff.
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Mar 15, 2014 14:52:57 #
I'm just wondering if you got your eye back :). I do think you tried to get too much in. For me there is no definitive subject.
Mar 15, 2014 15:00:25 #
Dave Johnson wrote:
I'm just wondering if you got your eye back :). I do think you tried to get too much in. For me there is no definitive subject.
Yes thanks - bifocal vision has been restored :thumbup: .
I'm sure I've seen calendar shots that were less subject-oriented. But I suppose the viewer would have to be an out-and-out scenery-lover to take to this one.
Mar 15, 2014 15:05:33 #
R.G. wrote:
The clouds had been catching my eye as I drove along, then I came to this bit and the hills caught my eye. Then I came to this track and it caught my eye. Then I got out of my van and the strainer post caught my eye. Then I went and did a minniev and tried to get everything in frame.
I'm left wondering if it's just too much of a stretch to get a distant background together with close foreground stuff.
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I'm left wondering if it's just too much of a stretch to get a distant background together with close foreground stuff.
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Minnie thinks you don't have ENOUGH in the frame, or not enough of the right stuff. Minnie thinks you might ought to have backed up or gone forward till you located a curve that bent around beneath the cloud bank towards the light part of the sky, and used that curve as the leading line. She also thinks you might need to be higher up, either on a hill (there is a promising little ridge just ahead!) or standing atop your own vehicle if all else failed. She also wants more fence or less fence. The muddy section of fresh turned field is not all that interesting. (She REALLY wants to drive down to that ridge and get closer to that light/dark contrasty area).
Like the cloud texture, and the play of light and shadow past the ridge. Nice capture, just a hard subject to compose with.
Mar 15, 2014 15:14:22 #
minniev wrote:
......Like the cloud texture, and the play of light and shadow past the ridge. Nice capture, just a hard subject to compose with.
That was my quandary when I was trying to compose - do I zoom in on the distant clouds and hills with a small amount of farming countryside in the foreground, or do I step back and get more of the strainer/fence in. I don't think there's a neat answer - just recompose one way or the other.
Mar 15, 2014 15:16:42 #
I like everything that is in the frame, RG. I think it's well balanced and nicely composed. Your exposure is on, and your colors are nice, but it is soft all over. You DOF calculations were off. I don't know that you can get everything in sharp focus at F5.6, although something should have been in focus. I wonder if you had some camera shake going on. I can't find anything in the image that is in sharp focus.
Mar 15, 2014 15:24:33 #
This was hand-held and taken by a compact (LF1). I would normally have had the aperture round about f/7.1 or f/8 for a wide range of subjects like that - I must have got careless....
I think there's probably a part of that freshly ploughed field that's in sharp focus. I wonder if there's a game in there - find the focal point :D .
I think there's probably a part of that freshly ploughed field that's in sharp focus. I wonder if there's a game in there - find the focal point :D .
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Mar 15, 2014 15:26:48 #
Mar 15, 2014 15:31:13 #
Nightski wrote:
Why don't you do something radical and try 'er out at F/16? :-)
The LF1 maxes out at f/8. The small sensor means that f/8 is the same size of aperture as something much higher on a DSLR. I suspect that it's the equivalent of f/22 or thereabouts (limited to avoid diffraction). You were probably right about the camera shake.
Mar 15, 2014 17:36:59 #
I like it - but you would probably have to print it quite big for it to have any impact. It is a study in line and recession and as you said the elements are there if only they were closer to your small camera. Try a 1/3rd vertical crop from the middle of the track to the far mountain peak (lose the last bit of trees) and blow it up.
Mar 15, 2014 17:49:53 #
G Brown wrote:
...Try a 1/3rd vertical crop from the middle of the track to the far mountain peak (lose the last bit of trees) and blow it up.
I see what you're saying, and your crop would simplify the composure, but I think that it's fundamentally over-stretched and the only answer would be to re-shoot for either the foreground or the distant hills (unless you just wanted it for a simple rural scene). Thanks for commenting, GB.
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Mar 15, 2014 20:09:53 #
I can understand your being taken in by the clouds; they're good ones. However, this image just doesn't work for me. My primary criticism would be with the overall composition. I can't identify a significant subject of interest. When using a road as a leading line, it would be better not to have it so off centered and leading out of the left edge of the frame. This is just accentuating the large, and basically uninteresting area to the right. Based on your comments, I think you may have tried to include too much without a clear idea of what you wanted me, the viewer, to really pay attention to.
Mar 16, 2014 06:33:31 #
Photographer Jim wrote:
.....Based on your comments, I think you may have tried to include too much without a clear idea of what you wanted me, the viewer, to really pay attention to.
Thanks for your comments, Jim. I think that when things catch your eye, it's a good sign that there may be something worth capturing. However, the fact that something caught your eye doesn't guarantee a good picture. The hills and clouds caught my eye, but they're just too distant to be the main focus of interest. I took another picture from the same spot that zoomed in on the distant hills, and it's more subject-oriented than this one, but I feel that even in that one the hills are still too distant. Here's a link to that shot.
http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-193575-1.html
Another problem with distant hills is haze, and the farther away they are, the more likely it is that haze will be a problem. There are some problems that re-composing just won't fix.
Mar 16, 2014 07:47:13 #
R.G. wrote:
... I'm left wondering if it's just too much of a stretch to get a distant background together with close foreground stuff.
For a pocket camera, probably too much. If you want to capture a large vista you will need a larger sensor. The problem here is that it cannot handle the fence, the foreground and the distance equally well. I think that camera is well suited to closer subjects like candids and street scenes.
As for composition, the only problem is the post and fence - they seems a bit reluctant to be part of the image and the fence leads out of the picture. If the post were actually to the left of center to include more fence and, perhaps another post or two, it would have been a stronger image. Alternately, you could have moved to the left to exclude the fence to let the road cross the foreground.
Mar 16, 2014 08:02:29 #
selmslie wrote:
....As for composition, the only problem is the post and fence - they seems a bit reluctant to be part of the image and the fence leads out of the picture.... ...you could have moved to the left to exclude the fence to let the road cross the foreground.
I realise now that the one thing that would have held everything together would have been a clearer shot of the distant hills. The trouble is they're so distant they need lots of zoom to bring them in close enough. The track and strainer post aren't bad foreground subjects, but they couldn't be included in a zoomed shot of the hills. They would have been great elements for a closer subject like an old barn or some such, but all that this shot has in the mid-field is.... well, field.
Thanks for your comments, selmslie.
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