Hand Of Man

greenspun.com : LUSENET : General Photo Critique : One Thread

After a six hours of cutting and clearing a new trail through the rainforest, we stopped to survey our trail work.

Does my image work?

-- John Thurston (John_Thurston@my-deja.com), September 03, 1999

Answers

I do like the DOF and close up the ax. I wish the path was more distinct against the foliage in the distance.

-- Gary Wilson (gwilson@ffca.com), September 03, 1999.

Your labeling of the shot certainly influenced how I viewed it. Just the dramatic shot of the axe isn't supported enough by the sorroundings to support the title, methinks, if the title indicates the conclusion you're trying to generate in the viewer.

The photograph itself is nicely conmposed and I like the polished metal of the axehead as counterpoint to the dark earth and foliage. The - what - thingie on the path pointing to the axehead is a little distracting, I think because it too is also evidently metal...but that's a minor quibble. Nice composition and exposure. Suggestion: could you have recomposed this to have the line of the axehead, the pick, pointing more evidently to a slash in the wilderness? In this shot the opening in the underbrush is just that - no sense of an ecology disturbed...again, if that was your intent, that is.

-- August Depner (apdepner@uswest.net), September 03, 1999.


I agree with the others, great shot, but i don't think it quite conveys the story you were trying to tell. I love the low angle.

-- rob dalrymple (robd13@erols.com), September 03, 1999.

John,

nice shot. my thoughts are that it would have more impact to have included the entire tool, keeping the head of the pick large, in your wide angle foreground, but somehow leading the viewers eye down the road. nice depth and exposure, and good use of the lens.

-- Daniel Taylor (aviator@vernonia.com), September 03, 1999.


Thanks for the comments. August, the "thingie" in the trail is one of our rocks. I hadn't noticed it before because they were everywhere on the trail. You are right, though, it is a distraction. I should have flipped it out of the view.

Daniel, I tried a shot with more of the tool handle showing, and another with the tool more horizontal. Both were tossed. By the time I backed up enough to get more of the handle in, I included too much foliage above, and when I layed it down it just didn't look right. The heads on those things are heavy and their natural resting state is head down. Placed any other way, it looked kind of like a car parked on its nose in a parking garage; not the shot I was trying for.

-- John Thurston (John_Thurston@my-deja.com), September 10, 1999.


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