Critique Desired: Colourful Sweden

[Nigel Allan]

Famous for painted houses and painted furniture, you cannot fail to notice the vivid colours in Sweden.

Nigel Allan: Old barn, Umea, Sweden





Nigel Allan: Three benches, Umea, Sweden




Nigel Allan: Single bench, Umea, Sweden

[Nicolas Claris]

Bonsoir Nigel
Yes, it is what surpirsed me the most when I flew over the Stockolm archipelago… quietness and colors!

[Asher Kelman]

Nigel,

your pictures seem to be carved out of the world with an exacto knife! You are precise.

Originally Posted by Nigel Allan

Famous for painted houses and painted furniture, you cannot fail to notice the vivid colours in Sweden.

Nigel Allan: Old barn, Umea, Sweden





Nigel Allan: Three benches, Umea, Sweden





Nigel Allan: Single bench, Umea, Sweden

How distinct and surgical your view is from the lyrical free flowing presentation by Nicolas, here:

Originally Posted by Nicolas Claris

Yes, it is what surpirsed me the most when I flew over the Stockolm archipelago… quietness and colors!

[Nicolas Claris: Stockholm Archipelago

Nicolas has just the wind in the sails and looks at the scene as a traveler touring the planet on a cloud!

Asher

[Nigel Allan]

Sometimes you just can't win. :)

If I hadn't been precise in this instance someone would have criticised me for being sloppy and pointed out how I could have cropped it tighter.

I just frame things according to my own sensibilities and what conveys a message for me. It might be the simple graphical rendition of the barn with virtually no extraneous shapes or colours beyond the central ones of blue sky, red barn, green grass, or the simple juxtaposition of the yellow house across the river echoing the yellow bench. For me these simple things 'anchor' the picture and I try and remove things which might distract from this message.

I see things as graphical shapes in the viewfinder I guess

[Mike Shimwell]

Originally Posted by Nigel Allan

Sometimes you just can't win. :)

If I hadn't been precise in this instance someone would have criticised me for being sloppy and pointed out how I could have cropped it tighter.

I just frame things according to my own sensibilities and what conveys a message for me. It might be the simple graphical rendition of the barn with virtually no extraneous shapes or colours beyond the central ones of blue sky, red barn, green grass, or the simple juxtaposition of the yellow house across the river echoing the yellow bench. For me these simple things 'anchor' the picture and I try and remove things which might distract from this message.

I see things as graphical shapes in the viewfinder I guess

Nigel,

I'm not sure that Asher's comment was intended to be a negative so much as an observation. The comparison between your three pictures and Nicolas' is very distinct and provided you have realised your vision or intent in these pictures then that's good. Certainly, you will know that Nicolas prefers colour to monochrome, and his comment in your earlier thread about using a modern colour approach to documenting the world today echoes some of my thoughts, if not my practice.

Of the three pictures you have presented, I think the barn is most successful as it stands, being precisely framed and having a clear tri-colour motif. The second picture is the one I want to like the most, but I find the foreground tables clutter it a bit too much - still they were there so that's fine - and I would prefer a slightly softer presentation. Finally, the third picture lacks the substance of the second for me. The vertical presentation and focus on one bench is less satisfying than the three benches composition.

Mike

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Nigel Allan

I see things as graphical shapes in the viewfinder I guess

Same with me, as far as composition goes (like in this thread). There is more that's needed to make a good picture, but the graphical shapes are a useful layout/positioning help.

Cheers,
Bart

[Asher Kelman]

Nigel,

Having your own way of seeing and showing what you delight in is valuable. The idea is to get insight on this handle to your inner feelings. This is your valuable resource! Most folk just copy what others do or simply allow the camera to see what ever is in the range of the lens. The seem to follow the Philadelphia Mallet Rule. This was proposed by some professor who declared that the first man who invented a mallet discovered that everything within sight, reach and travel distance needed to be hit with his new tool. That's the way with the abundance of photographs with which we are deluged. They only have the work of the camera's eye and the preferences of the brilliant little Japanese or German engineers inside them.

Here you have your own way of seeing: good for you! Be proud and work on it. Refine it and celebrate!

Asher

[Asher Kelman]

Nigel Allan: Three benches, Umea, Sweden original

Originally Posted by Nigel Allan

Sometimes you just can't win. :)

If I hadn't been precise in this instance someone would have criticised me for being sloppy and pointed out how I could have cropped it tighter.

Nigel,

Your sensibilities are fine and agreeable. I find your taste interesting and cleanly expressed. You define parts of endless scenes and say, here's something humble but worth your time, I discovered it for you. You work shows an effort to choose. I like that!

Some of the pictures can work in a number of ways. The houses themselves are interesting and then the yellow benches form a startling handsome base with a great linear repeating pattern of the wood. That is the rhythm of the repeating housing units, one after the other on the bank, nut the beats are at right angles to each other. I like that very much.

Thanks for allowing me to show some alternate edits which localize your choices a little further.

Nigel Allan: Three benches, Umea, Sweden Cropped above & below, with permission, ADK

I hope your love for the view is fully conserved respected by the changes I have offered. These are just ideas for consideration, not some expert opinion on what should be included or excluded. Rather if one does cuts like this, then how does it appear to you: refined or degraded?

Asher

The frame is just to respect the tiny picture and give it a special territory on this huge page.

[Nicolas Claris]

Funny ...
when I posted my picture here, my goal was just to abound in Nigel's image post and title regarding the vivid colors of Sweden.
I chose this picture because I like it and because it illustrates my saying.
It happens to me very often frame very tight, then they need to be very precise to the millimeter, like Nigel.
I love this attention to detail…
I am not sure I like Asher's crop, now Nigel's image looks like a poster sold at Ikea… (yes, a Swedish store, LoL!)

[Asher Kelman]

Originally Posted by Nicolas Claris

now Nigel's image looks like a poster sold at Ikea… (yes, a Swedish store, LoL!)

Which of Nigel's images looks like an Ikea poster?

Asher

[Nicolas Claris]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

Which of Nigel's images looks like an Ikea poster?

Asher

This one!

[Asher Kelman]

Nicolas,

You mean that it now looks like an Ikea poster, because I edited it or even before that?

In any case, I like it! Consider this, if Ikea didn't understand esthetics, they'd be out of business. Their job is to sell home happiness! So, if this picture brings happiness, that's great and exactly why the Swedes like the bright colors in the first place!

Asher

[Nicolas Claris]

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman

Nicolas,

You mean that it now looks like an Ikea poster, because I edited it or even before that?

In any case, I like it! Consider this, if Ikea didn't understand esthetics, they'd be out of business. Their job is to sell home happiness! So, if this picture brings happiness, that's great and exactly why the Swedes like the bright colors in the first place!

Asher

I mean the cropped version.

Yes, of course Ikea understand the esthetics, in the sense that they know what will sell. But their job is not to sell home hapiness, their job is to make money the more cleverly possible, hence, not only they produce to good price, but they let us know beleive that their clients are intelligent (I have been a long term Ikea customer!).

They produce posters (as a side product) that will not last long, buyers will be able to change them as soon as they will see a new one in the shelves, a normal consumerist attitude nowadays, that make undustrials rich, but not to the benefit of photography… soon if not already, Ikea will sell photos gone thru a painting filter process, badly printed on canvas… Ugly! I would prefer that people buy real paintings (wether they are originals or copies) or real photographs, to do this (buying photographs) they are plenty affordable pieces of art that you can buy in photographers galleries, but that needs a certain amount of time and to be oneself sure of one's choice instead of being guided by Mr. Ikea…

Their creativity is killing creativity because of their hegemony, they are leveling by the bottom, this is their business model. Not mine. Mass production is the evil of creativity and inventivity. This is what I call the Ikea paradox! (or the Ford paradox if we wish a more historical approach!)

Nigel's image was not so badly balanced! with your crop you deleted the tables of foreground, which are important to me (the viewer). And some of the sky.
So, in a certain manner, your proposal is well balanced. But a part of the image is lacking…

Crop only the sky and you're out of a balanced image. If you want all the necessary subjects of an image, you're then obliged to go back to the original frame…

The original Nigel image, as it was framed (or cropped?) was less trendy, making less people wowing, but who's looking for an general and overall kudos? In fact it would scare me…

[Nigel Allan]

Thank you to both of you....Maybe I should start selling pictures to Ikea :)

I see exactly what Nicolas's point is here and how the cropped panoramic version starts to look like a kind of decorative art you might put up in your kitchen to match your wall units or curtains. Although I do see how Asher has emphasised the lines here to improve the overall impact.

I like the foreground tables. I think their randomness breaks up the uniformity of the rest of the photo and they are an integral part of 'what is' in that picture