DigaPixBlog

Photographer: Al Sheppard                      

Date Submitted: Dec 7, 2007

Title: Rhode Island Church

Location: Rhode Island

Rating: 

 Photographer’s Comments:

“The photo was shot in Nantucket, between rain showers. I removed the wires, straightened the image and increased the contrast and made the doors more red. I held the camera very low, almost touching the ground. Also cropped and removed the debris from the walk.”

The worthy contenders:

  A     B    C    D  E     F      G       H   I    J      K      L                   

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Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in November of 1776.  The stone church was destroyed in an earthquake in 1812 killing 40 people.  The mission was secularized in 1833 but returned to the Catholic Church in 1865.  Today it is one of the best preserved mission complexes in California.

The Photographer has selected to photograph the repeating brick arches along one of the faces of the mission.  The old bricks and tiles create interesting textures and patterns.  This was taken on an overcast day thus avoiding hard shadows that would have been cast by the columns.  The sky has become on giant defused light box.

The photographer has done some manipulation of this image.  I would suggest that he may wish of take a look at a little less contrast.  You can see in the shadows the pixelizing effect too much contrast can cause.  Along the ceiling of the covered ach way there are lights.  You may want to clone these out of the image. This will also eliminate the contrast pixel problem with them.  Also in the distance is a trash barrel that could be either moved at the time the photograph was taken or cloned out on the computer.

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             Marked Up        Modified 

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I am not a purest when it comes to the type of photography I will critique.  There are those who don’t consider any computer manipulated images as photography and some who think of film old fashion.  It is my belife that as long as you start with a camera and end with a work of art it is should be considered based on the final results.  We are looking for the photo-artist.

The image presented here falls to the computer manipulated side of the equation.  The photo-artist took the original image and enhanced it using Corel Painter.  The final results are worthy of any established fine are oil painter.

This portrait composition is an excellent example of the formal style.  The subject is in profile while the body has turned to a three quarter position.  There is good definition in the back hair and which is nicely separated from the background.  The face is lit from the right side with a touch of rim lighting.  I feel the combination of the original photograph; composition and painting technique make a superb combination in this final illustration.

Below is show both the photograph as submitted and as originally photographed.

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         Original Photograph 

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The first moment I opened this photograph I thought I was looking at another Slot Canyon image.  The semi black background and the shades of yellow, gold and red umber replicate the scenes we have seen and taken in the canyons of Arizona.  But NO!  This is a macro of flower pedals.

I keep saying the photographing of flowers requires interpretation by the artist in order to take us out of the ordinary.  Well, here we have interpretation with imagination.  The photographer has made this image his own.

What I am amazed by is the amount of focus detail that was captured with this macro photograph.  The depth of field is remarkable for this amount of magnification.  The subject appears to glow from within. You will also note that the background is not pure black but rather has a glow that appears to be coming off the subject.

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Mono Lake and its Tufas go through a miraculous transformation over a period of one hour.  Before the sun has crested the eastern hills they are soft and mysterious.  When the light breaks over the horizon they come alive with golden light unmatched except for the red rock formations of the south west desert.  By the time the sun has started its ark for the day they have turned an unattractive gray.  In the late afternoon after the sun has gone behind the Sierra Mountains in the west you have a brief period of soft moody light.

This illustration appears to be during that soft light.  I suspect the photo-artist has done some manipulation of colors in this image, perhaps with camera filters or on the computer.  That is not a bad thing.  It has given this image and otherworldly atmosphere. 

An interesting thing I would like to point out is that the horizon is at the center of the photograph.  I feel this graphic works fine with the subject as illustrated when taken with the strong reflection on the water surface.  Perhaps a little less sky, but that is not much of a distraction.

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         Marked Up 

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Breaking the rules is a good news / bad news story, it works sometimes and it does not work most often.  But if you break the rules and it works you have a wonderful photograph.

Some of the rules are:

    1.   Have a definable subject

    2.   Keep the horizon straight

  3.   Have a strong graphic elements

I have seen very good photographs that did not have a strong subject, what I call chaos photography, where the lack of subject was the subject.  There are examples of rotated images that work well.  And I am sure you can recall images you liked that did not have strong graphic elements.

In this image we have an interesting rainbow spectrum of vertical bands of color that look like they just came out of a prism.  As a background they are interesting.  The grass is not a strong subject because there is a confusion of patterns created by the number of elements with lack of graphic definition.  Another consideration is the photo-artist’s technique of rotating the image 180 degrees.  In this case it has added to the graphic uncertainty of the grass.  I feel the photographer broke too many rules for this image to work. 

I would suggest trying to find a simpler pattern of grass, one, two or three stems that create an interesting pattern.  As always it is the photo-artist who has to decide if the final work is what they were after.

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          Photograph as shot 

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When viewing the world through the lens we should step back once in a while and absorb what is going on around us.  We may wish to reflect on why we see our surroundings the way we do.  Too often we get hung up on photographing what we have see others photograph, trying to recapture a great image, such as those beautiful photos of the Taj Mahal in Agra with the reflecting pond in front.  Are there no other ways of seeing the same subject through different eyes?

This photographer has said to himself I’m tired of photographing the fall color the same was as I have always seen and done.  How can I tell the story with a new narrative?  By isolating his attention to the reflection and then rotating the image he has shown the landscape from a new perspective.  Rule #1: always show the subject right side up.  But he broke the rules and created an interpretation of an old subject in a creative way.

This rainbow of color and slight distortion tells us about the fall color and the forest through the eyes of an impressionist painter.

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The Yosemite chapel’s first service in this building was held in 1879.   The building was originally located about a mile away from its present location.  In 1901 the structure was taken down and moved to this site.  From here you can see half dome in one direction and the falls in the other.  I think if there is a heaven this chapel in located in the center.

I like the way the church and the falls are framed by the tall trees on the left and the overhanging branches on the right.  This gives the scene a very unified and sheltered feeling.  It’s also interesting how the photographer only shows a portion of the building with a perspective that leads the eye into the scene.

Thou the under exposure of this image adds drama to the work the trees in the foreground and the tree on the left are devoid of detail and have become stark silhouettes.  Perhaps lighting the image just a little and cropping out some of the tree on the left is called for.

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          Cropped 

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It’s said that the more you practice the luckier you get.  This photograph shows both skill and luck.  What are the chances you would have your camera out, ready and prepared to photograph when this combination of elements all came together?  When you look at this image you will notice it is broken into three distinct horizontal bands; the mercurial water, the soft translucent fog and the cloud clad sky. 

A water fowl managed to place itself in the right spot at the exact moment of lifting off the water about to enter the fog and then the sky thus transitioning through all three bands.  This is the story told.

Our photographer might want to crop just a little of the very top of the image.  The rest of the illustration is full of texture and this portion of the sky is contrastingly smooth.   

When you watch a movie made in the 1980s’ or 90’s you will often notice the colored skies.  The camera person added a split color density filter to the lens to give some interest to flat gray atmosphere.  Most of the time it went unnoticed but if a little too much color was added it looked artificial.  I feel the color added to this sky is just a tad too much.

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       Marked Up    Cropped 

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They say the difference between a good photograph and a great photograph is a matter of inches and minutes.  I once had a friend who was a natural photographer.  He had the eye.  When we would go out shooting together we could photograph the same subject just feet apart.  When we got our film, yes film, developed it looked like we had photographed in two different counties.

The image submitted here had the concept of the craggy stone cliffs of the Catalina Mountains located just outside of Tucson Arizona.  These hills can be quite photogenic.  For most, not all, landscape photos to work they need three things; foreground, middle ground and distance.  And to be a really good image they need the right light.  However I think the photographer missed it by inches and minutes. 

I would like this photographer to consider what happens when these two requirements are missing.  The reason we need the three distance elements is they give us death and scale.  Too often people try to capture the big picture such as the Grand Canyon without reference points. What appears wonderful to the mind’s eye are only distant rocks in the final print.  The second element is light. Without good light the shadows appear black without detail and the lit surfaces become flat and void of interesting texture.

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       Modified to Simulate Moring Light 

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When I travel on the east cost of the US I am amazed how little natural landscape there is.  When you drive down many the highways you can go miles and see nothing but a wall of trees.  Easterners who visit the western deserts often complain about nothing to see.  But in the desert you can see for twenty miles in every direction and there is lots of landscape.  I once met a geologist from New England who had come to Arizona to gather specimens.  I asked him why he traveled so far to do his studies.  His comment was “Back home we can’t see the rocks for the trees”. 

Here we can see the rocks, and what rocks we have.   The photographer has captured one of those remarkable formations.  You will notice in the arch to the left there are a number of people at the rim.  These add scale to nature’s structure and the repeating patterns of sky create depth to the scene.  Even thou it is near mid day sun the colors are captured in the shadows and reflected light.

I would like the photographer to consider a couple of modifications.  The sky cold be darkened to give a little more drama and the partial white clods lack detail so they could possibly be removed with cloning.  Perhaps the image could be cropped in tighter to eliminate the trees and some of the rocks that are in full sun light.

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           Modified 

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The camera is a tool.  It can be used for many purposes, recording an event (a little girl’s 4th birthday party or her wedding), witness to an event (police evidence gathering or news reporting), educational (the textbook or National Geographic) or for pure enjoyment (the day in the park or the interpretation of a landscape).  Some may be art photography and some may be record shots.  There are those you will keep in your scrap book and those you will hang on the wall.  And where is the line between art and scrapbook?  Only the individual photographer can determine this.

This illustration of an avocado that has been attacked by a marsupial is an example of a very challenging subject.  The avocado is probably the least photogenic fruit in existence.  I would like to throw out the challenge to you photographers to take a photograph of an avocado(s) that is worthy of coming out of the scrap book.  Anyone can capture a beautiful sunset but it takes a real artist to create a work of art from an ugly duckling.

Perhaps this photographer wanted to illustrate the damaged caused to his crop but if art photograph is what he is after interpretation and insight are necessary.  I would recommend finding something interesting about the shape, texture or repeating patterns of this subject that we would be engrossed by.  Perhaps the photographer could get in closer, change the lighting, set up the subject with other fruit to create a contract between like items or even open up the avocado to expose the interior.

Record shot or work of art is all in the eye of its creator - the camera is only a tool.

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            Night Visitor 2 

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The photographer has done a very nice job of interpreting this subject.  The graphics are what set this image apart. The use of selective focus shows a good understanding of the advantages and limitations of macro photography.

Graphically there are two dominant elements, the implied circle and the diagonal lines.  The implied circle is seen in the tips of the flower traveling across the distant petals, then out of the frame, and reentering to the foregrounds.  The repeating diagonals are observed in the soft focus background color striation and then again in the fragment of stem in the lower right hand corner.  These give movement and interest to the background.  The focal point of the flower, the filaments and anther, are sharp throughout.

The photographer did something very fundamental in the creation of this illustration, pre-visualization.  He knew what he wanted the final image to look like and then successfully went about achieving it.

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Wow!  This is an image I will remember for a long, long time.  Big Sur area shot yesterday.  This photograph tells a story and brings up emotions.  And that is what we ask of art.

Graphically you will see circles within circles.  The most apparent is the sandbar in the center of the scene but more important is the outer circle extending from the distant horizon, then outside the frame and reentering too the very close foreground. The movement of the current has been captured with just the right shutter speed illustrating the semicircle flow of water around the sand bar.  With perfect exposure this evocates the moment just before night, this is the quiet time.

The only very small item that I would like the photo-artist to consider is the small white rock in the foreground.  Forget it.  It is perfict as is.

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For a week or so Southern California had high waves along the cost, the surfers loved it.  This often occurs this time of year along our beaches.  It is amazing to see the tall waves come crashing to shore but a difficult task to capture on film (pixels).

This rendition has two things going for it.  The first is the visible spray from the crest of the waves and the rock formation on the right giving us some perspective, so we can see their proportional height.   Without this landmark in the photo the waves could be one foot high or twenty feet high.

There are a couple of items that concern me at first glance.  The immediate foreground is some orange item.  It is so out of focus that we have no idea what it is other than a blob of color.  The next layer consists of rocks that are also distractingly out of focus.  I wish this rock formation were in focus and we would have a nice counter balance to the rock pattern on the right.  You may want to consider making this into a long narrow strip photograph.

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       Marked Up        Cropped 

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This image has a certain freshness about it, new fallen snow in a pastoral scene.  We see the young man leading the two horses and his dog there to assist with the task.  There are still a few autumn leaves clinging to the trees telling us that one season has past and another begins.

The brightly colored jacket of the man imposed on the dark horse makes him standout all the more.  The three houses in the back ground lets us know that this is a normal day in the life of the community.  The lighting is flat but adds to the flavor of a winter day.  This is a true Currier and Ives illustration.

The photographer may want to crop out much of the foreground snow fall.  It is not clean and detracts from the pristine feeling of the rest of the photograph as well as there is nothing of interest  the foreground can tell us.  Another item that might be eliminated is the few green branches on the right hand edge.  I would try to remove any small bits of things that protrude into the frame.

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        Marked Up    Cropped 

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This Monument Valley landmark has probably made Kodak millions.  The first thing we all do when we arrive is take this shot from the visitor’s center.  Come on admit it, you have too.  The good photographer will be there just before sunset to capture the brilliant oranges of the landscape.

This photograph was one of the better ones.  There are wonderful cloud patterns, dramatic colors and a well cropped subject.  I can find nothing that I would correct or change in this image.  This is an excellent photograph. 

Except the photographer that wants to make his mark needs to find a new way of interpreting and transfiguring icons we have all seen many times before.  It’s not easy to be the first to conceive of a new approach to a subject but if we are to standout from the rest that is the mission, if you chose to accept it.  Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t.  But when they work you have a work of art.                                                         

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In down town Los Angeles is an area called Bunker Hill.  Back in the 1950s and 60s this was what you might call a blighted area, then came redevelopment.  Adjacent to Bunker Hill was the worlds shortest rail way called Angels Flight which ran from 1901 until it closed during the redevelopment of down town in 1969.  It reopened in 1996 and opperated for just six years.  In this photograph you can see the oriental style building at the top of the rail way trestle.  That is the upper Angels Flight station.

This is an extremely dynamic architectural image. I like the forced perspective of the buildings and the structure for the rail running up along the right side.  This gives a strong feeling of the hill.  The colors are dynamic and strong. 

When I first saw this photograph my thought was that the wires should be eliminated.  But on realizing these are part of the rail way system I feel they have to stay to tell the story.

There is one item that does distract me.  The jet trails, one visible and one invisible, cutting through the clouds.  These could be cloned with the beautiful wispy clouds.

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          Modified 

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This horse looks like what I feel like whenever I have to be around snow.  Does he look happy, does he look warm, and do you think he would rather be somewhere else like a nice warm barn?  Have you ever seen a photograph of horses on a sunny beach running through the surf?  They always look happy.

This photograph captures the mood of winter.  The defoliated trees in the background and the posture of the subject tell the story that spring is a long way off.  This is a photograph where a little information goes a long way.

The photographer may want to consider cropping just a tad, perhaps by taking a little off the top to remove the fence in the distance and some off the left hand side to get the subject further away from the center of the image. 

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             Cropped 

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                                                                      This portrait of a lovely child in her family’s native costume must have been a delight to her parents.  She has such piercing green eyes and strawberry blond hair it is apparent she will be a beauty when she grows up. 

Her pose is natural and active at the same time.  I like the way the photo-artist has had the subject posed in a sitting position thus eliminating the background.  This photo could have been taken anywhere in the world.

The photographer has elected to present this image as a near high key illustration rather than a traditional exposure.  Perhaps the photo-artist would consider adding just a little more saturation to bring out more color in the child’s face and hands.  But that’s definitely the photographer’s decision to make.

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           Modified    Photographers Final Version  

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Black and White photography at its best displays a wide range of tones and detail throughout the gray scale.  This is well illustrated in the image presented here.  There is detail in the whites of the fog and black detail everywhere except in the subject, the defoliated tree.  I do not know where this photograph was taken but it looks a lot like the hills along the central California cost.

The separation of layer upon layer supplies a marvelous feeling of three diminutions throughout the scene.  I particularly like the way the distant hills are set against the light gray horizon that graduates into a mid tones.  This image captures my imagination.

Some fine details could be considered.  In a pristine scene like this we want to eliminate anything man made or even natural that looks out of place.  The hills are covered with live oaks and in the middle ground is what appears to be a palm tree.  You may want to clone this out.  The same thing it true for a small white dot on the distant hills.  I know this is being picky but that’s what I’m here for.   On the right hand edge of the frame is another defoliated tree that is vying for our attention.  You may decide to crop this out.  

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This photographer was lucky to have such a beautiful model.  She is the picture of health and fitness without looking like a cameo.  She is truly the girl next door.

The ketch light in her stunning eyes is perfect while her pose is natural and fluid.  The three quarter angle of her body gives us the illusion of potential movement.  Window lighting gives highlights to here auburn hair.

You may wish to consider a few points.  The fill flash worked well however they have a tendency to cast shadows you need to be aware of.  You will notice along her arm and hand there is an unnaturally colored shadow that is caused by the flash shadow and the ambient amber colored light in the room.  The shadow on the wall was caused by the fill flash.  This can be prevented by moving the subject further away from the background.  Another point to take a look at is her right elbow is almost tangent to the edge of the frame.  This gives her the appearance of leaning on it and can be changed with a little cropping.