The Mad Hatter Was Here

Colors and rust - I like this combination.

For the mad hatter - this could be worse

Best regards,
Michael

doug anderson said:

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Doug,

One cannot help liking the colors, but is that the essence of your picture? Gestures, (made by the chairs to the table), seem to me to be more evident when the image is viewed in B&W. Not saying it should be monochrome!

Asher

doug anderson said:

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You are posting 5 images a day for us to comment and I still don't know what feedback you are looking for. So I will try something different: go back to the place, move 2 meters to your left, lower yourself a bit and you will be able to frame the chairs so as to exclude the tree and include the fire place in a diagonal with the table in the upper right corner of the frame. Try it with and without the branch on the ground.

Another Shot Made the Same Day


I'll do this, Jerome. This brings up an interesting subject. I'll agree that it is efficacious to leave out much in a photo, but I'm wondering just how big a problem the tree is. If I go back and shoot and exclude the tree, but if the angle of the photo is not as intuitive as the one I've shot here, what is the point. The photo cannot ONLY be a matter of excluding everything but the subject. I run into this with spontaneous street photography as well.

Here is another shot done the same day, from a different angle, that includes more of the trees.

doug anderson said:

I'll do this, Jerome. This brings up an interesting subject. I'll agree that it is efficacious to leave out much in a photo, but I'm wondering just how big a problem the tree is. If I go back and shoot and exclude the tree, but if the angle of the photo is not as intuitive as the one I've shot here, what is the point. The photo cannot ONLY be a matter of excluding everything but the subject. I run into this with spontaneous street photography as well.

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Then we did not understand each other. Nowhere did I wrote to exclude everything but the subject. Actually, I suggested a framing that included the fire place, which does not belong to "the subject".

That would be much easier to explain in person, because I could draw some schematics as my art teacher did when I was much younger. But I'll try anyway. The purpose is to guide the viewer's eye. When presented with a picture, the eye will jump from element to element and you should seek to avoid that the eye is lead outside of the frame or comes to a place where there is no way out, a block. In you first picture, the tree is a block (because it frames a little square at the corner) and leads the eye out (with its vertical shape), this is why I suggested to exclude it. The fire place, on the other hand, would make a neat counterpoint to the table and fill a corner that would otherwise be empty.

Now, there are many solutions to this problem and your second picture proves it. Here the trees do not block the eye and the picture is better. There is also a nice interaction with the blue chair which points to the group of green leaves in the upper right corner, my eye is following that line all the time. OTOH, one small block I would try to change is that the yellow chair touches one tree, I would move a bit to the left to separate the two.

Thanks, Jerome. I'm going out to reshoot this this weekend and will implement your suggestion.

Another Angle on the Chairs


As per Jerome's suggestion, I've shot this again to include fire and exclude trees.

This, I prefer of them all as it has more of a sense of the abandonment and solitude of the place. Those partial trees help to get the brittle truth that folk departed and the chairs rusted through their striking colors, on a journey back to nature.

Of course, this may not be abandoned at all, but the family are currently romping in a pool or playing basketball or by the barbecue. So don't tell me that!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

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Actually, of the 3, I also prefer this one. But it was not there when I suggested to reshoot the first picture.

What did you learn by the reshoot, Doug? Do you still prefer the first version or do you think that the tree, at the place it was at first, distract from the subject? What happens with the fire place in the new version? Do you think it belongs there (you could have changed its position by changing your height)? Frankly, now that I see it, I am not so sure myself, but was it worth a try?

Do you understand the purpose of the exercise now? When you present a picture, people can't "correct" it. They can only tell you what bothers them and, maybe, make a suggestion on what may work (or not). But in the end, it is something you can do yourself on the spot, trying different angles and framing. I don't know about you, but on a static subject like this one, and having the idea that "The mad hatter was there", I would probably have taken about 10 minutes to try different angles, observe in the viewfinder what height and distance gives me the proportions between the different elements that fit the message and, since digital is free, maybe have taken 5 to 10 pictures till I am pleased... or not, some subjects never make it.

Jerome Marot said:

Actually, of the 3, I also prefer this one. But it was not there when I suggested to reshoot the first picture.

What did you learn by the reshoot, Doug? Do you still prefer the first version or do you think that the tree, at the place it was at first, distract from the subject? What happens with the fire place in the new version? Do you think it belongs there (you could have changed its position by changing your height)? Frankly, now that I see it, I am not so sure myself, but was it worth a try?

Do you understand the purpose of the exercise now? When you present a picture, people can't "correct" it. They can only tell you what bothers them and, maybe, make a suggestion on what may work (or not). But in the end, it is something you can do yourself on the spot, trying different angles and framing. I don't know about you, but on a static subject like this one, and having the idea that "The mad hatter was there", I would probably have taken about 10 minutes to try different angles, observe in the viewfinder what height and distance gives me the proportions between the different elements that fit the message and, since digital is free, maybe have taken 5 to 10 pictures till I am pleased... or not, some subjects never make it.

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I like this one best too.

As an aside, I was just watching "The Genius of Photography" from the BBC. Great little series, and one of the quotes in the first episode went something like this:

"With a photograph, we are putting a frame around a subject and saying "Look at this, this is important!""

I loved that line. Not sure if that was the exact quote, but it is close enough. Something to think about when discussing cropping/framing! Great series to catch too if you can.

Asher, quite a lot actually. I took about 30 shots at various angles of which only 2 are posted above. I'll go back when the area has greened up a bit and shoot some more. I love those chairs and their crude colors against the post winter funk of the trees.

doug anderson said:

Asher, quite a lot actually. I took about 30 shots at various angles of which only 2 are posted above.

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Then, please post us another 4 or 5 for comments, plus the 2 or 3 that you consider the worst of the lot.