What do you think?

October 22, 2007 12:01 AM | Related Categories: The Lake

This is a photo taken at the weekend in Luzern. What do you make of the composition? Some people would say that it is "unbalanced" - the right hand side is dark and the left hand side is light. I have my opinion, and just because I posted it doesn't mean I disagree with this... what do you think?

Leica M8 35mm Summicron

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I think this is one of your best! If it's unbalanced as you say, it's because of the heavy clouds on the right side... so for me, this is normal. But you know, I'm a a pure amateur photographer...!
# Posted By Peter | 10/22/07 9:39 AM
Pour moi, cer n'est ni le lac, ni la terre que tu as voulu. C'est ce magnifique ciel tourmenté!
# Posted By cergie | 10/22/07 11:25 AM
@cergie - yes, but the photo needs the mountains and the lake. I think the sky is impressive only in contrast with the land, which it struggles with, and the puny little human creations which it dominates
# Posted By Richard | 10/22/07 12:27 PM
Is this the moment where we witness the tragic failure of the Sentimental in its struggle with the Naive? The scene overall is magnificent, and the human can feel both his insignificane and his priviledged part in the Great Creation. BUT.....for once the photographer cannot capture what his heart feels. The eye has transmitted the signal, the brain has processed it, and the heart (the Spirit) has tweaked it with the special chemistry.......but the image has failed. The photographer is left baffled wondering what happened to the stupendously moving experience he felt as he opened the shutter, only to have it closed upon digital ephemera.

Ironically have just chosen a similar item which I am about to post....but Richard's "failure" is far superior to mine.
# Posted By Chuckeroon | 10/22/07 12:49 PM
@chucker - brilliant. That first sentence sums up exactly why we can never be satisfied with the photographs we bring back from the mountains. And I guess it indicates your pessimism about Schillers success in his goal
# Posted By Richard | 10/22/07 12:54 PM
I have the same frustrations. I went on at trip to Yosimite last May and as hard as I tried, many photos didn't capture what I saw (felt).

Sometimes a subject like a person in the foreground contemplating the view or just another more common object to give contrast to the grand scene can help, but not always.
# Posted By Narwhal | 10/22/07 1:01 PM
Filosophy at its best! :-)
I guess some scenes are best experiencing live. They will not let them capture on film.
# Posted By Bouncing Light | 10/23/07 10:29 PM
Chuckeroon made such a brilliant interpretation I almost gave up on commenting myself. But here it is.
The composition is centered around the sun, located smack in the middle and the clear and dark patches are divided equally, showing that we are at a point where the outcome of the struggle is uncertain. Had you moved your camera to the right, the darker side would have prevailed, adding more drama. But you chose to give each side a chance...
# Posted By Nathalie | 10/24/07 10:04 AM
Also... have you considered giving more room to the lake (water hardly visible here), thus adding reflections to the composition? It would have been detrimental to the sky I know, but reflected clouds can also add a lot of drama...
# Posted By Nathalie | 10/24/07 10:07 AM
@nathalie - don't say that about Chucker, you'll just encourage him. I made a conscious decision to minimise the lake - this shifts the emphasis 100% on the sky - it dominates - makes everything else seem small and leaves you in no doubt in my opinion that the drama of the sky was the reason for the image. Splitting the image down the middle was unavoidable if I wanted to include all the drama. The real life sky that I was interested in was indeed split into two, unless I really cropped it. So I went with the unbalanced approach which will upset a lot of text book critics who have a set of compositional rules that they apply to every image they see
# Posted By Richard | 10/24/07 10:23 AM
@nathalie again - you are right about the possibilities of reflections, but the surface of the water was quite rough, so no well-defined reflections were available
# Posted By Richard | 10/24/07 10:24 AM
Bien sûr en lisant tes réponses et les commentaires, je vois que c'est bien le ciel qui est privilégié et remarquable
Cependant oui, le lac et la terre sont nécessaires, comme un cadre (le même mot pour un tableau et un paysage) souligne, situe et met en valeur un tableau...
# Posted By cergie | 10/24/07 1:19 PM
Well I am not able to use Chuker's words but there's something in photo that doesn't persuade me. I stared it for hours and... No about some min and I think that the problem is that those sun rays (on the left) disturb because the skyline is not anymore pure. In fact the photo is perfect on right side where there is no sun reflection at all. Of course the mine is just an opinion.
# Posted By Fabrizio - ikol22 | 10/25/07 7:03 PM
OK. My starting position is that I like the shot, even if - or more likely because - that isn't the way I would have displayed it. But you asked what we think and I am pleased to have the effrontery so to do.

I would have chosen a different format, longer & thinner, even letterbox-like, developing the way the shape of the cloud echoes the shape of the mountains, making more of the ensuing almost mouth-shape eating up the sunshine.

Failing that, I think I would have tried to use the B&W process (you did shoot RAW?) to create more difference between the mountains and the clouds, maybe masking to create an ND filter effect.

As far as the dominance of the dark is concerned, I really like it. So much so, that I think I would have taken away all, or all but a small strip, of the water.

So all that describes what I'd do, which certainly doesn't guarantee the end result would have been better.
# Posted By Ham | 10/26/07 1:55 PM
@ham - thanks for taking the time and producing a thoughtful commentary. My starting point is that I agree with you wholeheartedly, and disagree with you completely! That's a playful introduction to what I have to say, but it's true to a large extent.

Your suggestions about re-framing and adjusting the emphasis would result in an excellent composition (IMHO) - that's what I agree about. On the other hand, what you are really suggesting is a compositional device and not related to the image that the photographer saw. Coming from that perspective we need to try and understand what I was trying to represent, and judge it's success or failure on that basis.

The post was mischievous, because I was hoping to make fun of text-book, formulaic criticism, but your comments are interesting and also instructive. As an aside, I personally carry around a little mantra about photo criticism which says "ok, i don't like this photo, or I would change it, but why would, or could I like it if I was a different person?"

Cheers

Richard
# Posted By Richard | 10/27/07 6:47 PM
Richard - I _think_ I was saying the exact same thing.

Interestingly (?) I posted that first comment from my laptop, a pretty-OK IBM/Lenovo, but I thought I'd check it out from my Eizo monitor. I can confirm that this is exactly the sort of image that shows why it is worth having one. Not that it was bad beforehand, but it really is so much better with the added tonal resolution.

That's always the thing we forget. When you handed round a print, you could be certain the other person was looking at the self-same thing as you. With digital, everyone's monitor shows something different. Might go some way to explain the popularity of the over-sharpened in-yer-face images on the web.
# Posted By Ham | 10/28/07 2:49 AM
@ham - agree 100% about prints. Also there are some images that you can only really appreciate as a print, particularly some black and white. I try and get around as many print exhibitions as I can to keep that perspective fresh, and I do print my own B+W images
# Posted By Richard | 10/28/07 7:26 AM
Unbalanced you ask? Yes. Very well done, indeed. Balance is overrated and rarely gets the win.
# Posted By M. Wrigley | 5/16/08 8:27 AM
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