Sunset on a Rocky Beach: Cliché alert

I am working on this Big Island Sunset (Waikoloa). There are several technical problems with this image, mainly arising from blending multiple exposures. What are your thoughts about further improvement?

Hi Nathaniel,

I like the image and it belongs in this forum so we can discuss it from an artistic standpoint. I would have like the top of the tree and more landscape to the right. However the picture is a good scene as it is and has a lot of further potential. Most of the work of making a piece of art like this, I would posit, is not in choosing where and when to trip the shutter. Rather it's here when one has to distribute relative importance and attention to each sub-unit of the photograph.

But "Cliché"? No, Nathaniel, this is not cliché!

Everything, a newborn baby held by it's mother for the first time, a fluffy chick cracking open it's shell and emerging and a sunset like this can be "cliché". However, mostly not. We have an almost infinite appetite for natural life cycles. There is nothing false in that.

At the end of the spring fashion, however this season's, hot purses, shoes and vivid colors will be cliché because the over-the-top style is an expression of uniqueness which is fabulous, stimulating, good for attracting mates but artificial and wanes.

So, Nathaniel, your sunset is not cliché. What I do find is that you are delivering a complex image in a way that might be presented differently. first the color space should be converted to sRGB as the web is then not cruel to your picture. The wider gamut of Adobe RGB has no good guide of how to be presented on the web, otherwise.

Next, IMHO, the sky, water and dark rocks on the left should be handled separately since each has different imperatives for optimization. Lastly that reflection of the dying sun can be strengthened.

I'll now attempt that and then post the results!

Then there's another question, how might the impact of the image be changed by varying the lower extent of the view?

Asher

So here is my edit.


© Nathaniel Alpert 2008

Hope you like this initial approach. Is so I'll try a little more.

Asher

So, Nathaniel like the changes so here we go. Let's try to see what ideas there are that the brain may grasp as whole things, entities that can have a life without us complaining that there's something missing or not belonging.

Now we are not going to even countenance, at this stage, any notion of "turning expectations on their head" by presenting something entirely against any instinct or imagined rules. We can do that perhaps later.

Here let's just look at where we might crop away, just a portion and in so yield a unique new image. This must that appear whole, an individual "unit" of art and interesting enough to want to enjoy again.

I have drawn colored lines to indicate crops below:




Each crop would bring out alternate levels of importance for various parts and patterns in the photograph. One could follow this up by subtle enhancements any of these individual ideas to make our point.

Asher

and here's the set of images above cropped:



No other edits have been made, but, for example, in A: Sky cut, one could remove the vertical branch.

Asher

So what do you think of this kind of exploration? Disrespect? Creative? Adventurous. Or perhaps you are adamant that a good photographer will frame correctly when the shutter is hit. Som doing otherwise is merely a crutch for undisciplined work!

In any case, I see no conceit or cliché in your photrograph, Daniel. Just like Otago Penninsula, an image caught my eye and made me think of what might made a photograph 'work" or become "art".

Asher

Asher,

This is a wonderful communication of ideas. Perhaps the demonstration is unique, I don't know. I find it most useful to see how you create an image.

One may discuss these ideas, for or against, or as starting point for new approaches. In creating my images, I tried several different positions in the hope of a "perfect" composition. The idea being to maximize technical quality. I gave little thought that technical quality would be achieved at the expense of compositional flexibility. I take your point that there is value in contmeplating and adjusting the composition after the shutter is clicked. We, or at least I, have become a slave to the dictum that the great majority of the compositional choice be made on the spot, that is the right lens and tight framing. Your discussion and example suggest to me that there is some middle ground in which we should make a series of images that allow both extremes.

It would be helpful if you can discuss the methods, even briefly, you used to achive the natural looking enahncement of the reflected sunlight in the tidal pool and sky.

Nathaniel,

As you know, when the light is changing fast, I'd rather have several wider shots and work later at home! I'll try tto send you a PS file with layers.

So who feels that we must frame the scene tightly?

Asher

Hi Nathaniel,

Where is the final destination for the image? A 20ft square image ion a wall, a post card, or on pc screen/digital frame?

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray West said:

Hi Nathaniel,

Where is the final destination for the image? A 20ft square image ion a wall, a post card, or on pc screen/digital frame?

Best wishes,

Ray

Click to expand...

Ray,

When I have a travel destination that I love, I try to return as often as I can. I am always hopeful that I can "be there" when everything comes together, the light, the scene, my composition. I have never succeeded. But typically, upon returning home, I select a few shots to work on. I have been using the Innova 2-sided smooth cotton rag and my Epson 2200 to make a scrap book. I will sometimes select the best of those to print at 13x19".

So, to answer your question more directly; it depends. Sometimes, when standing in front of a wonderful scenic, I fantasize about the wall-sized print. I aspire to that, but I've never made one and never had a picture where the technical and esthetic elements merited it.. Up till Asher's "lesson" given above, I strived (and nearly always failed) to nail the composition on the spot. Currently, I am thinking about trying for one large enough to hang over the fire place. Everything needs to be right to get that kind of quality, including a picture interesting enough to look at everyday. I don't know if my sunset is in that class.

Asher's lesson has given me something to think about. I have my tripod, my 5D, my L's and I am out there trying to optimize my technique, so I can make the BIG one. As I said above, I am rethinking that.

I am interested in your thoughts and experience in this regard.

-Nat

Hi Nathaniel,

Thanks for the explanation. I hope this is not turning into a blog by my part, but here goes. This is easy for me, I have no emotional attachment to the view location, (nor to your fireplace)

If I look at the original image on my screen, there are lots of white specks, obviously at a larger size, you will see they are pebbles, etc. Also, the original composition, is in my opinion unsuitable for anything smaller than full wall size. I think I would need to move things around a bit for anything smaller. There is absolutely no reason to think that anything in nature conforms to what I think is a pleasing composition, in particular when it comes to fitting it into a rectangular frame. No reason to think what I think is 'good composition should be what you think is good composition. So, what to do, in order to downsize this to 'over fireplace size'? Some time ago, in another thread which I can't locate, there was a link to a page where someone had collected together a selection of about a dozen 'compositional rules' and iirc related it to astrology or something. If I can find it, I'll repost a link.

It may seem, from what I'm saying, that you have done nothing right. That is not so. If I thought the image was not worthy of my time, I would have left it well alone. I like the tonality, the pastel shades, etc. I would alter the composition. Asher has exercised some fine surgical skills, my approach is more 'chainsaw like'. I have not viewed in detail what Asher has done, maybe we are on the same page. (It was you, Nathaniel, who mentioned cliché in the title ;-) - more is less.....

I have not deliberately altered any colours, I am concerned with cropping....

So, Image 1 below -



You chopped off the top of the tree. The top left hand of your image sky is cut off from the rest, an optical illusion makes the sky look smoother up there. There is boring sand/mud/gravel in front of the rock. I don't really know what to look at. Maybe the rock is too big/dark to balance the wispy tree branches. The sun/reflection and boat are virtually insignificant. At wall size, that is fine, I could walk up and down, looking at each detail as required, but taking it in in one glance, is not possible. So, remove the boring foreground, and the sky differences and the cut off branch - cut it off more. The sun and boat are now more prominent. the branch, and rock patterns lead in from the lhs pointing me to the rock, my eye is led more round the image. In the original, the large rock shadow leads me out again, now I notice the line of reflection towards the sun, etc.



Image 2 below -

Do we want that rock? It's a bit black, makes the image maybe a tad dismal. Here's more sky, more light







Image 3 below,

If you think the rh foreground is bland, stick back the rock, but make it glisten, or something interesting - I've not....






Image 4 below,




On the very left hand edge, there is a muddle between a broken branch and the background trees. I thought that it may be best to remove the background shoreline (dynamite?) but that leaves an awkward distraction of the broken tree branch. Cropping it is just as effective, and simpler.


Thanks for letting me play with these. All simply done by selecting and copying to layers, then turning 'em on and off to see the final effect. In general, I think I'd possibly make the tree a bit darker, you may then be able to balance it with the dark rock. Now, it maybe that you are of the belief that images should be as taken from the camera. That should be so, for forensic purposes, and for advertising (but it isn't). For pictures on the wall, the end justifies the means. I can't go back their to get the whole tree in, if I did, is it worthy? Does it matter -up to you. I hope, after you have it printed, you don't start thinking - 'if only.....

Get the L shaped bits of cardboard - even landscape painters use them. practice mentally cropping every image, every scene you see, try analysing your eye movements, learn to see. (The tree is too light, imy view). Finally, very carefully consider the location of the print - the wall colours, the rest of the room, the lighting, the frame, the matting, if any. I think this image could be nice, but you can make it 'stunning', if you want to.

It is all an illusion.

Best wishes,

Ray

PS, and then there's portrait.....

Ray,

I have received great advice, which I truly appreciate. It is up to me to internalize and practice.

-Nat

Another thing Nathaniel,

Always come home with the rest of the tree! If one is using a camera in manual mode, it's just a matter of swing in the camera without budging the end of the lens much, so the lens entrance is the center of rotation. Then if you wish, the top of the tree can be added. The exposure of the frames will be the same and so stitching is simple.

My view is that you have the perfect right to design you composition to fit into the final setting of the photograph. To me nothing is sacred in your vision except that it's perhaps best when iterative in development and finally satisfies you!

Finally, what we have seen is that with the uncropped image, we have the ability to loook at different parts of it on each return visit and get a new experience.

I personally like the foreground rough beach. So as long as there is real detail there, just a small crop would be enough.

Otherwise, I like the picture as it is!

I like both Nathaniel, this one and also Kahullulala beach (sorry, forget the exact name, hehehe)

Both have a painting like quality to me.

Just thinking out loud, it might be a possible thing to set up a photoshop action that allows a variety of crops by the push of a button to be applied and compared. The way I could think about it is that you would predefine and safe crops, load the original to layer 1, copy picture to new layer, apply crop 1, go back to layer one, copy again, apply crop 2 etc.

This way you could always have a variety of perspectives to observe.

Georg Baumann said:

... The way I could think about it is that you would predefine and safe crops, load the original to layer 1, copy picture to new layer, apply crop 1, go back to layer one, copy again, apply crop 2 etc.

This way you could always have a variety of perspectives to observe.

Click to expand...

Good idea, except of course you cannot crop layers independent of each other. What one can do is to create a black or white mask in the areas of the layer which were to be "cropped".

Cheers,

Cem

couple of L shaped bits of card is quicker, easier, better.