Wednesday, April 16, 2008
up a creek, Old Fishguard
Comments:
..and ne'er a paddle in sight! You'd have thought they'd be something in all that flotsam and jetsam to get you out of there. For a busy picture it does have a quiet serenity to it. It may just seem like a muddled mess but the ebb and flow of the tides keeps them in their 'rightful' places. A strong diagonal from boat hull to upright boat adds a good break between the crowded and less so.
The detritus of a working harbour is not the most photogenic of subjects. When I see things like this I always wonder about the cost and effort of cleaning it all up. Also which bits are useable and which rubbish?
The contrast and tonal range makes the detail almost 3D, to the extent that it almost looks clean. There is a strong diagonal of rubbish through the image!
Just the sort of thing to get you chucked out of your local camera club. I mean you've got all the club subects, but you've stuck them in a heap and mashed them about a bit. Old harbours are supposed to be picturesque. That's the scene setting on the camera one further around the dial :-)
I like the framing which creates and nice lead in from the base of the image to the lead out top left (yet tonally balanced by the brighter spot top right). I'm not so keen on the high contrast b&w rendition. Makes me wonder what I'd have done.
I share colin's qualms about the high contrast rendition, but the composition does work. It's almost as if they are queued up to get into a show.
Enough order imposed on the chaos here to make it all quite interesting and readable.
The scale is a bit confusing to me since the background does not seem to recede much -- as if the boats are toys. Perhaps that is in part because of the high contrast tonal range, though I don't have the difficulties with that otherwise -- it looks fairly real to me and detailed enough.
The high contrast is pretty real: that's what a bright, low sun does in January when you are shooting into it. It's interesting about the perspective: the dinghy in the middle would be smaller than the f/v with a cabin behind so they appear similar in size and thus confuse. I'll show it to the club one day although most of my pictures leave them confused.
The only thing I have to add to this is the potential to burn in the lower right corner so that the hightlight of the wooden pallet does not take your eye out of the image. It is a very interesting image to look at with a lot of things going on, especially the flow of the items from bottom right up to the upper left corner.
Perhaps someone in your camera club can find an "S" curve to preserve the integrity of the image!
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The contrast and tonal range makes the detail almost 3D, to the extent that it almost looks clean. There is a strong diagonal of rubbish through the image!
I like the framing which creates and nice lead in from the base of the image to the lead out top left (yet tonally balanced by the brighter spot top right). I'm not so keen on the high contrast b&w rendition. Makes me wonder what I'd have done.
The scale is a bit confusing to me since the background does not seem to recede much -- as if the boats are toys. Perhaps that is in part because of the high contrast tonal range, though I don't have the difficulties with that otherwise -- it looks fairly real to me and detailed enough.
Perhaps someone in your camera club can find an "S" curve to preserve the integrity of the image!