Rock in the Maury

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This photo is a scan of a 4x5 POP contact print, toned in gold thiocyanate.


-- Chad Jarvis (chad_jarvis@yahoo.com), June 23, 1999

Answers

I like the water, the rock, and the tree leading to the rock. Maybe tighter framing or less DOF would isolate these elements better. Also the "print" seems to lack a true black.

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), June 24, 1999.

I've been thinking about this image for a day now and I think I know what it is I want to say about it, so here goes. I think that the image has great potential but there are some technical aspects that bother me about it. The main subject, the rock, seems to be plunked down too near the center of the image. I think it would work better if it was more to the left but not just by cropping or by turning the camera. Move the camera so that the main rock is more to the left but retaining therocks that are on that edge in their same position. That will ballance the image a little more and give the water some place to flow to instead of imediately exiting the frame after it passes the rock.

I also agree about the lack of darker tones. Bear in mind that some of this may be due to my looking at a digital representation and not the original print, but as noted above there are no blacks in the image. I would print it with a higher contrast (are POP papers graded?) and bring the average tonal value of the image down about half a zone to a full zone. As it is now everything seems to be at zone 5 or above. You need more rich, dark shadow areas that still retain detail.

You also need to burn in the edges of the image. Having the edges of the image being as light or lighter than the rest of the image tends to make your eyes fall off the image. Note the rocks on the right edge of the frame. They are the same value as the main subject and since they are rocks too, they basically demand as much attention as the main subject. Since they exit the image, they cause your eye to follow instead of redirecting your gaze into the subject. Burning the edges will guide your eye back the focus of interest. Be careful though that you don't lose the detail in the dark rock to the left or the darker trees in the upper right. Just bring everything else to the values that are in those places now.

Other than those nit picks, I kind of like this image. I am in a "wet rock" period right now and enjoy seeing what others are doing as well as trying to improve my own aproach to this type of image. I commend you on your choice of shutter speed. The amount of movement versus detail in the water is spot on. Stopping down a little would give you less softness in the trees in the background, but you would lose the detail in the water. I chose the water detail over tree detail.

Hope this was of use to you.

-- Fritz M. Brown (brownf@idhw.state.id.us), June 25, 1999.


Let me start by saying that this image is virtually unprintable on regular old silver gelatin paper, even grade 0, as image density exceeds 1.8. The highest value at the top of the rock and the lowest value on the shoreline behind and to the right of the rock are about 7 zones apart, thus the reason I chose to print it on POP. In truth there aren't supposed to be any zone 9 whites or zone 2 blacks. If I would have let the paper print out for another 30 seconds or so, the shoreline would have had the prescribed low value, but the rest of the image would have looked like mud. The scan really doesn't do the image justice (if I may say), as there is much more to it than simple zone 1 through zone 10 analysis: the image is actually warmer than the scan, more of a bronze color, and the texture of the paper is unlike silver gelatin.

-- Chad Jarvis (chad_jarvis@yahoo.com), June 26, 1999.

I'm wondering if this will work: move yourself more to the left and take lower camera position, use field depth for the focus of foreground log and water and the rock, get rid of the trees in the background. Just a thought.

-- Shawn Tang (xxt2@po.cwru.edu), February 26, 2000.

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