Covered alley

Hi folks,

I am unable to decide whether to keep this picture of a covered alley or to trash it. What I like about it are: composition, distribution of various architectural elements and the arches which nicely frame and layer the picture, cobblestones and light. What is dislike are: no clear subject and the whole is not very exciting (although not appalling either). When in doubt like this, I usually trash rather than share but recently I have realized that others did actually like a few of my pictures which I had trashed so I am trying to be prudent here. What do you think?



Cheers,

Back later Cem - just so you know I looked and am thinking!

Mike

Hi Cem

Maybe because of lack of color (no kidding), but I don't feel comfortable in the picture…

As a spectator/viewer, I can't make my mind if I should feel cold or warm…

Would you have a colored version to show? or even with partial saturation?

Nicolas Claris said:

Hi Cem

Maybe because of lack of color (no kidding), but I don't feel comfortable in the picture…

As a spectator/viewer, I can't make my mind if I should feel cold or warm…

Would you have a colored version to show? or even with partial saturation?

Click to expand...

Hi Nicolas,

Here is a color version for you. But you have more or less confirmed my doubts that it is not something special. Thanks.


Cheers,

hmmm
maybe not
desat (30%) desat plants (40%)
warm the white (+5% of majenta and yellow)
get read of lights and rays…

and now, open the door?



Just for the fun, thanks for not sending some killers to me!

Lessons learned

Hi Nicolas,

I appreciate your efforts for making something out of this image, but I think that your time is way too precious to spend it on beating a dead horse . Let's admit, if the picture doesn't have what it takes to start with, no amount post processing will help resurrect it.

Lessons I have re-learned and want to share with you are:
1) We all take crappy pictures. Actually the real keepers are in the minority unless one is a god of photography, lol.
2) Do take some distance from the picture to get rid of the emotional attachment (when the picture is taken quite recently).
3) Be harsh and honest to yourself. Why did you take this picture, what does it tell you? Did you reach your objective in capturing it?
4) Give priority to processing the real keepers (and share those), not the ones you're not uncertain about.
5) etc, etc, etc...

Thanks for your patience....

Cheers,

Cem
you still can use it to determine what you didn't liked on it, finally.
That can become a lesson to take and fertilize:

it could have been fine with a longer focal lenghts, or the same lens and another position.
Saying this after cropping your image.

Michael Fontana said:

Cem
you still can use it to determine what you didn't liked on it, finally.
That can become a lesson to take and fertilize:

it could have been fine with a longer focal lenghts, or the same lens and another position.
Saying this after cropping your image.

Click to expand...

Yes Michael, you are very right. I have decided to share this here in the Risk-it forum already expecting that we would draw more or less these conclusions eventually. So it makes sense to share the experience for the benefit of other members or lurkers out there .

Cheers,

PS: I have some other shots with other focal lengths and positions taken on this location, but none really good :-(

Cem_Usakligil said:

Hi Nicolas,

I appreciate your efforts for making something out of this image, but I think that your time is way too precious ....

Click to expand...

Well, sometimes sharing some times with good friend is worth a few sleep… ;-)

Cem,

I'm happy to disagree with everyone!

Of course it looks better in color. It comes out a a nicely composed architectural shot for the owner of a home for sale or for a rental property. It has a lot to say for the architecture and the good experience one would have there. Charming architecture, spacious drive and likely a great inside and probably grand lving space. Color does that! lipstick on a pretty girl is often sexy too.

The benefit of the original decision is that one does not depend on the easy shortcuts to fabulous by great color. The B&W works only with good tonality and boiled down composition where textures and shapes provide an anatomy for our mind to fill in all the blanks.

So how good is the original picture. Well, let me first place this in context. It's about repeated archways and at each one there is or isn't a gate. The key feature is a cobbled path that goes through the arches and then there's' something we can't quite make out, it could be a fountain, a sculpture, a bench, but it's intriguing.

The picture is a great idea. The issue is the form. The best way for me to try to reach an understanding is to refer to the work of Ben Rubinstein here. In his struggle to find the right way to photograph the various stone structures of the old city Jewish Quarter, Yemin Moshe he came to the veritical "panorama" shape.

So how might this work here? Well the celebration is exacltly the stonework, repeated arch motifs and the windows. He spends a lot of effort just doing this and yes, there's a many, boy, cat occasionaly, but it's the stone work and the passageways that are the subject.

Now in your Covered Alley, the B&W tones are excellent. However, there's a lot of busy detail on left 45% of the image that does not pull its weight. It contributes little I can see to the value of the image n this form. The drama of the interesting alley is sidetracked by us being falsely lead to search for meaning in the left side and we come back empty-handed.

Now if the left side is cropped away entirely from the vertical line of the drainpipe or even further 1/3 into the left part of the dark bricks of the arch, then we have a work that one can start to consider in a new way. I have not cropped it. but that's something you might very well consider. I have a feeling that this, although seemingly extreme to me is a/the natural presentation of this picture. Why not give it a try? I really am devoted to your work on portals so humor me and give it a try! If it's not right, only then go and retake the picture with the idea that the shape is really controlled the the demands of the architecture to your, not the common fashion of 8x10 proportions. That's why Ben's pictures came to mind. It's not for you to turn you back on this as it still has life!

If you like it cropped, then maybe working the B&W conversion, (and your new choices for shading for this presentation), will finally give you the satisfaction that is eluding you.

It's there! It just has to be released.

Asher

Hi Asher,

Asher Kelman said:

...Now in your Covered Alley, the B&W tones are excellent. However, there's a lot of busy detail on left 45% of the image that does not pull its weight. It contributes little I can see to the value of the image n this form. The drama of the interesting alley is sidetracked by us being falsely lead to search for meaning in the left side and we come back empty-handed.

Now if the left side is cropped away entirely from the vertical line of the drainpipe or even further 1/3 into the left part of the dark bricks of the arch, then we have a work that one can start to consider in a new way. I have not cropped it. but that's something you might very well consider. I have a feeling that this, although seemingly extreme to me is a/the natural presentation of this picture. Why not give it a try? I really am devoted to your work on portals so humor me and give it a try! If it's not right, only then go and retake the picture with the idea that the shape is really controlled the the demands of the architecture to your, not the common fashion of 8x10 proportions. That's why Ben's pictures came to mind. It's not for you to turn you back on this as it still has life!

If you like it cropped, then maybe working the B&W conversion, (and your new choices for shading for this presentation), will finally give you the satisfaction that is eluding you.

It's there! It just has to be released.

Asher

Click to expand...

This is the crop I have tried, does it work better this way?



Cheers,

PS: This is not a part of the portals BTW, but you knew it already

Cem,

That's so superbly better! Just a tiny bit more so that the white brick on the left below the arch is gone and the eye is not attracted by the staccato jiggering of the stone into the white brick. the eye should just skim past that left column merely getting some "refraction" at the edge like a photons streaming past an aperture. We need to get past that wall so the eye goes to the center of the image by the small long structure and then has to go around and explore the possible entrances to the building.

It can't be that a person would do more than recognize that column and miss it. It's a landmark, a guide to passage, not a feature of main interest. The width is thus further narrowed. So then we get a really tight passage and less choices. Whenever s passage gets this narrow, we are, in a way, running a gauntlet as in the nocturnal snapshot of a narrow stone walkway picture by the distinguished Munich architectural photographer, Rainer Viertlböck on vacation in Venice .

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Cem,

That's so superbly better! Just a tiny bit more so that the white brick on the left below the arch is gone and the eye is not attracted by the staccato jiggering of the stone into the white brick. the eye should just skim past that left column merely getting some "refraction" at the edge like a photons streaming past an aperture. We need to get past that wall so the eye goes to the center of the image by the small long structure and then has to go around and explore the possible entrances to the building.

It can't be that a person would do more than recognize that column and miss it. It's a landmark, a guide to passage, not a feature of main interest. The width is thus further narrowed. So then we get a really tight passage and less choices. Whenever s passage gets this narrow, we are, in a way, running a gauntlet as in the nocturnal snapshot of a narrow stone walkway picture by the distinguished Munich architectural photographer, Rainer Viertlböck on vacation in Venice .

Asher

Click to expand...

You mean like this one? What about the dark strip on the RHS, should it go as well?

Cem_Usakligil said:

Hi Asher,


This is the crop I have tried, does it work better this way?

​

Click to expand...

Not really: to complex, if you want to feel the spaces better:

- add more to the left, including the small statue and a bit of shadows at its left side.
- cropping the (door)-shadow at the very right; either you make it larger - which is not posssible - or then you leave it.
- you might crop a bit of the top as well; so the black arc isn't going to the right side.
That enhances the relationsship between the first arc at the top right and the other arcs in the background

Cem,

The dark strip on the right side is the anchor, like the frame on the side of a lot of Magritte's pictures or a rock in the foreground of a landscape. This is now a clean shape. The rest is your allocation of colors to hues and how you will light the passage.

This is so much stronger. Think about this. Many great photographers spent weeks on one print, meticulously repeating steps but rocking more, rubbing a little extra developer there or whatever technical trick was needed to get the effect they wanted. Then they might start etching shadows with a special machine or else painting areas with inks. That's your fingerprints on the image that only you can create. It must not be, unless you personally lit the scene, that the distribution of light and shade that the camera records, (and the file shows after development), is the same as that which your imagination requires. So this area is where the most work in creating the image to deliver is made.

I strongly believe that outside of vertical market commercial work, for work purposed as expressive art, this part of the work requires iterative dialog between you and the picture.

Yes, such feedback will alter your original intent. That's no different than your child growing up and expressing its will. So, for the advanced creative work, I believe that what is produced gets to influence how it, itself, will be presented. It's as if your own creation becomes your own child, choosing what to wear before leaving the house, but you have the final say.

Right now, I think you'll agree that the essence of the picture is laid out.

Good night my friend, it's 3:23 am!

Asher

Michael Fontana said:

Not really: to complex, if you want to feel the spaces better:

- add more to the left, including the small statue and a bit of shadows at its left side.
- cropping the (door)-shadow at the very right; either you make it larger - which is not posssible - or then you leave it.
- you might crop a bit of the top as well; so the black arc isn't going to the right side.
That enhances the relationsship between the first arc at the top right and the other arcs in the background

Click to expand...

Thanks Michael for the comments, here is the crop I did accordingly. I should admit I kind of like it

Asher Kelman said:

Cem,

The dark strip on the right side is the anchor, like the frame on the side of a lot of Magritte's pictures or a rock in the foreground of a landscape. This is now a clean shape. The rest is your allocation of colors to hues and how you will light the passage.

This is so much stronger. Think about this. Many great photographers spent weeks on one print, meticulously repeating steps but rocking more, rubbing a little extra developer there or whatever technical trick was needed to get the effect they wanted. Then they might start etching shadows with a special machine or else painting areas with inks. That's your fingerprints on the image that only you can create. It must not be, unless you personally lit the scene, that the distribution of light and shade that the camera records, (and the file shows after development), is the same as that which your imagination requires. So this area is where the most work in creating the image to deliver is made.

I strongly believe that outside of vertical market commercial work, for work purposed as expressive art, this part of the work requires iterative dialog between you and the picture.

Yes, such feedback will alter your original intent. That's no different than your child growing up and expressing its will. So, for the advanced creative work, I believe that what is produced gets to influence how it, itself, will be presented. It's as if your own creation becomes your own child, choosing what to wear before leaving the house, but you have the final say.

Right now, I think you'll agree that the essence of the picture is laid out.

Good night my friend, it's 3:23 am!

Asher

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot Asher, much appreciated. I see this discussion as being very valuable to others as well, not only because I have the need to save this particular picture, it may be beyond redemption. Good night!

Cheers,

Cem_Usakligil said:

Thanks Michael for the comments, here is the crop I did accordingly. I should admit I kind of like it

Click to expand...

Yep, I think the succession of spaces is clearer, that way.

If you cut the black strip at the right - you're even more °inside°

Michael Fontana said:

Yep, I think the succession of spaces is clearer, that way.

If you cut the black strip at the right - you're even more °inside°

Click to expand...

Cem,

So in the end, it has boiled down to two slightly different versions but the paths for the viewer are clarified. Try both perhaps but let each be siblings with there own rights and imperatives.

I value that you are so forbearing to allow us to make such suggestions while you are in the process of planning your battle to tame this image to your evolving concepts.

At some point, when and if you return to this location, there will be so many new ways of seeing what this might trigger in your imagination for more work. There's always more work, LOL!

Asher

Cem,

I am too late back and your friends have helped you make your picture live more - perhaps extracting what you first saw?

My first reaction to the first post was that as it stood it didn't quite work - nice, but not enough. I thought about introducing a figure, probably shadowy and blurred, but that didsn't seem the way here. The scale means the figure would be too dominant. However, the crops are excellent. I like the first you did after Ashers suggestion, but not the second as it loses too much of the space's character. Also the later version with Michael's input is good, gentler and less dramatic than the first 'Asher crop'

Cheers

Mike

Asher Kelman said:

Cem,

So in the end, it has boiled down to two slightly different versions but the paths for the viewer are clarified.

Click to expand...

That's a very valuable and important point! Every situation has one or multiple potentials - it's up to us to understand and enter into' em.
Personally, I quite often try to creat different versions of the same capture.

At some point, when and if you return to this location, there will be so many new ways of seeing what this might trigger in your imagination for more work. ....

Click to expand...

It's not only that location, but if that moment is taken seriously it can be very helpfull in other situations as well - becoming a personal preference and in the end leading to something like a °personal style°