IMAGE: Les Pitons, St. Lucia

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The Pitons in Soufriere, St. Lucia. Canon EOS 1N, 28-70L, Sensia II 100.

-- James Tarquin (tarquin@erols.com), July 09, 1998

Answers

James,

I like this shot although I sense some "awkwardness". The left side and foreground are dark and the top right half is bright. I find myself drawn to the mountains but continually pulled to the sunset at the right and out of the frame.

-- Paul Lenson (lenson@pci.on.ca), July 09, 1998.


Somehow the colors here look very artificial to me. I think this image would be better if it is shot when the position of the sun is higher (i.e. a little later if it is sunrise or a bit earlier if it is sunset).

-- Shun Cheung (shun@worldnet.att.net), July 09, 1998.

I have to blame the scanning process a little here :o)

The slide has detail in the shadows. Even in the distant mountains. However, my scanner can't cope with extremely dense, dark shades, and merges them into black.

I tried compensating, but it just made it worse, so I gave up and reverted back to the original.

However, the colors are genuine. I upped the saturation a nudge, but only to compensate for the scanning process. JT

-- James Tarquin (tarquin@erols.com), July 09, 1998.


Could you make a digitally mask for the mountains and then splice them in digitally ss they appeared with more shadow detail.

-- Paul Lenson (lenson@pci.on.ca), July 09, 1998.

Nah. That's what I tried. I spent over an hour carefully masking the entire border of the silhouette and then tried to adjust the levels. But no detail was scanned. It just wasn't there. And the more I adjusted the levels, the shadow just got browner and browner with no detail.

-- James Tarquin (tarquin@erols.com), July 09, 1998.


James, I think the shot is pleasant, interesting, and fun. But (you figured there would be a "but", right?) the light area on the right leads me off the edge of the image; I just know there has to be something nifty over there. So in that sense, it's a little frustrating. It might also have been nice if you could have gotten closer to the water to widen it up a bit so that the near and far shores wouldn't have merged.

This may be wildly ridiculous given the actual terrain and vegetation, but moving to the left and forward and turning the camera to the right might have taken care of the things I mentioned and enabled you to get that sunset area and the mountains and the water.

Of course, that would have been a different photo, and I like this one just fine. I don't think the lack of shadow detail is a problem, though of course it would be nice if we could see all the detail that you can see in your slide.

-- Randy Wilson (randy@uafphpl.uark.edu), July 09, 1998.


I like this image a lot; a nice lurid sunset with interesting stuff on the ground. I hate so say it, but this reminds me of my own seascapes.

Unlike some of the other criticquers, I don't think that the "unbalanced" feel is detrimental, I would call it dynamic, instead. My eye likes the movement between the light and dark areas of the image.

If this was a people picture, some of the comments might be that the area to the right, where there could be something interesting going on, adds to the mystery, sort of expanding the "story" into areas where the viewer's imagination comes into play. This is usually considered a plus for an people picture, a sort of engaging vagueness or obscurity. I don't know why that's considered detrimental to landscapes. Do we have to tell it all in one shot? Do viewers of landscapes want it all in one package and should not be expected to bring some of their own visual creativity into play? Or is it just that we don't play the mind games that other artists/photographers do to get their images accepted?

Frank

-- Frank Kolwicz (bb389@lafn.org), July 09, 1998.


I'd call this a pleasing close miss. Like Frank, the brightness to the right doesn't bother me in the least. I do wish the foreground rise didn't jut up to the base of the taller distant mountain. It detracts from it and you've lost what appears to be a bit of reflection. To my eyes it makes the composition just a bit clunky.

I still like it, though, I'm just feeling nit-picky.

-- Don Baccus (dhogaza@pacifier.com), July 09, 1998.


I have to agree with Don, THIS IS A VERY NICE IMAGE, I love the color and the silhouetted hills. The merge of the dark forground with the lower left hill is my only problem. I would have liked to see the water go through there. To reduce Don's clunky feeling you might try various crops of the dark bottom.

-- Bill (Bill.Wyman@utas.edu.au), July 09, 1998.

Thanks for the criticism. That "merging" of the hills which cuts off the water is distracting.

I have a terrible confession to make.....I didn't go searching too far for this shot. This is from the porch of my room in the house that I was staying at in St. Lucia. I could have walked further up the hill and found a higher location where the hills didn't merge...This wasn't a photography vacation, so I didn't have my tripod (I used a table and towel for this one), and that would have made things difficult.

I have a different photo that was aimed more towards the light and was taken 10-15 minutes later. I don't like it as much. I like to have something in the foreground against a sunset (although the mountains are hardly "foreground").

If I could go back tomorrow (I should be so lucky), I would go about 30 feet up the hill and try again.

-- James Tarquin (tarquin@erols.com), July 09, 1998.



I can't get over the feeling that this image is not level. I guess previous comments have shown that web-based image critique is only good to a certain point (pretty dependent on a scanner, its operator's ability, and the resident graphics card and monitor on the client system). I see some pretty obvious digital artifacts in this image.

Very peaceful image. Sounds like you let the natural beauty of the place make up for a bit of laziness as a photographer (hey, I do it all the time when I go to Kauai).

You probably should have stayed there longer - you might have gotten a better shot eventually. ;-)

-- Sean Yamamoto (seany@altavista.net), July 10, 1998.


Oh, yeah. The second image (as is) is not bad. However, if you crop/remove the entire left half of the image (maybe go for a square composition), it is incredible.

-- Sean Yamamoto (seany@altavista.net), July 10, 1998.


I disagree with some of the other contributors about cropping this image. I'd like to see it even wider, as a panorama with the sun at one end and the mountains at the other. (Every now and then I get this temptation to rent a Fuji 617 medium format camera for a weekend...)

-- Richard Shiell (rshiell@lightspeed.net), July 19, 1998.

Just found this web site tonight. I really like the picture. The only problem with this photograph is that the left portion with the dark area in the middle of the river is distracting. I Might crop it so you lose the bottom third of the whole photograph. I am deliberately being critical because I think that is the purpose of the group. I have looked at about ten to fifteen images so far. This is one of my favorites. I'm far harder when I critique my own pictures.

-- Thomas B. Roach (sigint@thegrid.net), December 15, 1999.

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