Taken near my home-town Ostrava (Czech Republic). The image is a little larger then 600*400 - sorry I have only this scan and digital resizing is not the right solution I think ...

-- Stanislav Kaczor (stanislav.kaczor@kabelplus.cz), August 05, 1998

Answers

I like how it keeps me looking, with the natural patterns of clouds. Then the tree keeps it from being another could photo. Would have a 16x20 print of this on my wall without a though.

-- Tait Stangl (taits@chemsite1.com), August 05, 1998.

I really admire the way you managed to get the horizon line perfectly straight. The composition and cloud shapes are nice. However, it looks like your lens was subject to some nasty flare. The flare is messing up the contrast in portions of the image. Were you using a lens hood?

-- Steve Leroux (steve@bigadventures.com), August 05, 1998.

Thanks for quick comments :-)
to Steve: I'm not sure what you mean by "the contrast in portions of the image"? If you mean the high contrast in the top left corner - it was nature origin - sun was close to the edge of cloud... I didn't use a lens hood and my lens was not so good one, so some distracting moments are possible. Would you try to specify this "flares" more closely? Sorry to bother you, but I have sometimes problem with my "english"...

-- Stanislav Kaczor (stanislav.kaczor@kabelplus.cz), August 05, 1998.

It doesn't look natural. The horizon is too level and cuts through some clouds (see lower right). Looks like it's shot over a wall or a fence, or the black band has been added digitally. My guess is digital. It's too straight and level to be natural!!

-- Bob Atkins (bobatkins@hotmail.com), August 05, 1998.

I think my concerns are more specifically the variation in the contrast in the image. The cloud in the bottom right is fairly hazy and low contrast, while the ones at the top are higher contrast. It bothers me.

Also, I think the big open space in the middle needs something. The clouds are spread out over the edges of the frame and the distance makes my eyes tired...

As for flare, I believe I can see some bright patches going down diagonally to the right just above the tree, starting at the middle-left cloud. The bottom left cloud also seems to have some lens-induced bright patches on it.

And while I'm at it, the brownish color of the air isn't the most pleasing. I wonder if a warming filter would have lightened up the mood a bit.

But hey... you did keep the horizon level, which is something I can never seem to get right.

-- Steve Leroux (steve@bigadventures.com), August 05, 1998.

Unless the photographer tells me this isn't a manipulated image (see my comments at the top of this thread), I'm going to assume it is and delete it. I don't believe it's a horizon. I think it's a black band added across the bottom of the image.

-- Bob Atkins (bob_atkins@hotmail.com), August 05, 1998.

I agree with Bob. If it isnt an intentional manipulation, it might be an incomplete scan or upload. Either way, Stash, it appears that the bottom of the shot is missing.

-- Jim Korczak (korczaks@ptdprolog.net), August 05, 1998.

I am not convinced that this photo is not natural. The horizon is not exactly straight and looks like a distant horizon across open plains as I can see in Australia. The black band has the same colour as the silhouette of the tree. As for the photo, it is interesting, but I don't like it.

Bob, could you please explain further why you don't think that this horizon is real?

-- Adam Liedloff (a.liedloff@qut.edu.au), August 05, 1998.

It's too flat. Also look at the clouds at the lower right. They look like they have been cut off half way down. If that was a distant horizon, the clouds would dim a little. I suppose it could be a close object, but to be that flat it would have to be artifical. It's also absolutely black (RGB 000) and the sky is light. That much contrast is odd, even if were shot on Velvia.

I'm not saying it is a digital creation, it just looks a lot like one. If the photographer tells us it's a natural image, I'll believe him. In that case it's just really unusual!

-- Bob Atkins (bob_atkins@hotmail.com), August 05, 1998.

Regarding Bob's question "is the horizon line natural" I think the horizon line you can see in the picture is the top of a small slope ,that's why the the ground cuts clouds on the "horizon line" ; the picture was shooted descending a bit the slope becouse the photographer want to have a point ot interest , as the readers of this forum require (the bush ;just colors and clouds are not enough :-)), raising up to the clouds. I shooted some photos like this one(very "close" horizon line) , that's why I tried a guess.

-- Adrian Sorescu (guide@dial.roknet.ro), August 06, 1998.

Ouuu, Thanks for all your comments.
To say truth I didn't expect the discussion about natural or unnatural look of my photo. I have not enough time now to read your comments more in detail (ou my poor english). I want just declare: IT IS ABSOLUTELY NATURAL PICTURE - NO DIGITAL MANIPULATION !!!. Later I would like to return to your comments in details. Maybe I would try to scan my picture in bigger resolution, where you could see that it is only natural horizon.

-- Stanislav Kaczor (stanislav.kaczor@kabelplus.cz), August 06, 1998.

How odd, being concerned whether it's a digital manipulation. I've taken many photos like this one, where the bright sky overwhelms the foreground, especially on Velvia (of course), and this is exactly the way it comes out. It IS difficult to find such a perfectly straight, perfectly flat horizon, but that's sure as hell not something I'd seek to alter and create in my landscape photos. As for the photo itself, the light's not ethereal enough, the tree not eerie enough to be declared a winner; the light's just not right to grab me by the shoulders and shake me around... :)

-- Lyn Lord (LynLord@aol.com), August 06, 1998.

OK! It's natural. I wonder what the "horizon" is though. Clearly it can't be a distant horizon. It must be something fairly close to the photographer.

It's still a very interesting shot. It just looks doesn't look natural to me! I've never seen "contrast" like that during the day (this is clearly shoot during the day). Maybe late in the day near sunset, but this isn't a sunset shot. The shot almost works for me, but not quite.

-- Bob Atkins (bobatkins@hotmail.com), August 06, 1998.

It's funny to discuss whether this is digital or not instead of whether this black band "works" or not. To me it LOOKS artificial, no matter whether it is or not, and I don't like it. The sky and clouds and the tree are very impressive and I would like this image much better if you'd crop off the bottom portion and leave only a very thin strip of black (perhaps 1/8 of an inch or so).

-- (andreas@physio.unr.edu), August 06, 1998.

I revert to your comments as I promised.
About horizon: It was large meadow gradually sloping upwards. The horizon and the tree was at a distance of about 200-300 meters. On the detail of this horizon you can see that it is not exactly straight and even the grass is a little visible. The unnatural look is probably done by small resolution of digital picture on monitor, big compress ratio and unsharping after scanning. It will look enough natural on a big print which I am going to do, I hope.
About contrast: The sky was extremely bright (sun was near to the edge of the lefttop cloud) and the land was completly in shadow. And it was a little underexposed. I must say that I was suprised like you that the photo was exactly as I wanted - only siluete of tree and the black land - but there was really big diference between the sky and the land in brightness...
Film was Kodak Gold 100, print Kodal Royal.
Thanks a lot for all comments. I am leaving for vacation in the morning, so I will not be able to answer your possible comments.

-- Stanislav Kaczor (stanislav.kaczor@kabelplus.cz), August 07, 1998.

Just because the bottom portion is totally black (RGB 0 0 0) doesn't mean that this was manipulated digitally....it could simply mean that it's a bad scan, or that the scanner itself couldn't pick up the details at the bottom. Plus the images IS only 600 x 400, pixels tend to bond together when they're such low res.

Now, if this was scanned on a big ol' drum scanner at 3000x2000 res and it's still black at the bottom, then we might open a different can o' worms!

Nice picture by the way. Love the clouds!

-- Scott Gant (sgant@interaccess.com), August 08, 1998.

The flat horizon and total-black is a result of the resampling followed by a JPEG compression.

Load the high-res scan of the horizon into a viewer, and pixelize [5x5 input region -> 1 pixel on output], and compare it to the original view at "high-magnification". You can see the horizon ends up looking just as flat in both.

The pitch-black is a result of JPEG compression. After the DCT, the encoder clips image components that fall below a certain threshold -- and the encoder "reads" them back as zero. This can result in dark areas of an image being encoded as 0, despite "high frequency" structure present that may have been originally present.

In the instant image, the region below the horizon has a small area of non-blackness. Load the image above into your viewer and run a histogram-equalization. A few blocks of gray appear at the bottom centre, below the horizon.

As for the image itself: it looks "dirty". This is probably smog/dust/smoke which has been amplified due to the backlighting of the scene. The result is a contrast reduction from the (roughly) forward-scattered light off the gunk in the air. I think it would have looked nicer if the view was 90 degrees to either side. Or maybe not, depending on what was there (or not there).

-- Matthew Francey (mdf@my-dejanews.com), August 09, 1998.

Unlike some critics here, I do know the Ostrava region. I do not believe that this image has been manipulated. However, I agree that the black strip is disturbing and I would crop it off entirely.

BTW it appears that manipulation tools - both "traditional" and digital - are much more popular and frequently used in America than in Europe.

I like the image. Nice clouds.

-- Jana Mullerova (jam@terma.com), August 10, 1998.

I like the sharp horizon, but if it were my picture would probably crop off about 1/2 to 2/3 of the dark bottom so it emphasizes what detail is available at the horizon border (would be nicer if there was more detail visible along the horizon).

Unlike some others who commented, I like the gradation from soft contrast at the bottom right to sharper contrast upper left. That is the clue that lets the sun participate in the picture even though it is off-camera.

Wonderful picture.

-- Brent Hutto (BHutto@InfoAve.Net), August 24, 1998.

The clouds and sky are very interesting and make the photo worth taking, However the large black area does not "work" in terms of adding anything to the photo or complementing the sky. Cropping it off is a possible solution, but would not leave you with much besides the sky. It looks like the situation had a lot of potential but the photographer failed to capitalize on it and the photo is unsalvageable as it is. What I would have done is looked for an interesting foreground with a center of interest compleming the sky and used a graduated ND filter to preserve its detail -- here is an example using this approach. An alternative would have been to incorporate some water in the forground -- here is an example using that approach.

-- Lester LaForce (102140.1200@compuserve.com), August 26, 1998.

Very dramatic! High impact! I like everything about it, including the dark botton. Would like to add to comments on straight horizon. my biggest problem, and an problem I've noticed in many other photos.

-- Mabel Huber (rurpho@tele-net.net), August 29, 1998.