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Mist, sunlight and shadows in the Colne Valley

jvs
Posted 21/12/2021 - 14:19 Link
Fields, walls, moors and walks - the Colne Valley has pretty much everything I look for to keep me active. With the occasional mist, haze and sunlight thrown in, I'm happy! The last few days have provided everything. Hope these appeal! A mixture of K-1 + FA 28-105 and K-3 + Sigma 17-70. All comments welcome!
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John
Flan
Posted 21/12/2021 - 16:06 Link
A great set of scenes with great depth and beautiful light
i can look at them again and again and haven't made my mind up on a favourite
very nice and relaxing photos well done to you Sir.
davidstorm
Posted 22/12/2021 - 21:23 Link
Hi John

Thanks for posting these, I've taken a little longer to review them than I normally do to try and give some useful comments and CC.

The first and third for me both have some distractions in the right portion, in the first one it's the fence and in the third it's the power lines. The second image works so much better for me, the natural compression from the lens and the slight mist just pull it all toghether and the distant factory / chimney make for a natural place for the eye to settle.

The fourth doesn't work well for me as it has no leading lines and no distant focal point, so my eye doesn't really know where to look, whereas in contrast the fifth image has the leading lines, the same factory and also some nice symmetry with the lines of the distant hills echoing each other.

6 & 7 are lovely attractive images, but don't have the same pull as #5 for me.

8 suffers from a similar issue to #4 in that my eye doesn't move through the shot and doesn't settle on anything in particular.

9 10 and 11 all have strong leading lines but nothing to draw my eye beyond the middle distance. I think #10 potentially works the best of the three and would benefit from a crop at the bottom to remove the horizontal wall, which distracts my eye a little at the bottom left.

12 seems to fall into the same category as #4 and #8.

The final image I think is potentially one of the best, it has a great foreground, but unfortunately the middle distance is obscured and this stops my eye from moving through the shot. Maybe if you had climbed up a few feet to gain a little elevation (nearer the fence on the left?) you could have retained the strong foreground and gained more of a lead-in whilst also being able to capture some of the middle distance.

I hope that this feedback is constructive and useful John, I'm by no means an expert landscape photographer, but it struck me that I might have tweaked the compositions on some of these shots a little bit, to maximise the impact of the images. By that I mean just moving a few feet one way or another, or including something in the foreground / middle ground to help the eye wander through the shots.

As you might gather from my comments, #2 and #5 are my favourites from the set.

Kind Regards
David
Flickr

Nicola's Apartments, Kassiopi, Corfu

Some cameras, some lenses, some bits 'n' bobs
jvs
Posted 23/12/2021 - 18:03 Link
Thanks, Flan, glad you enjoyed them!
John
jvs
Posted 23/12/2021 - 18:17 Link
Hi David, good to hear from you - I think!

Food for thought in your comments, which is no bad thing, so here’s my response.

Not painting or cropping out the fence/wires in 1 and 3 is easily solved. The distraction is more obvious to me in 3, less so in 1. A slight crop of 1 also brings the rule of thirds bang into play and losing some grass at the bottom makes little difference. I did actually experiment with using the power lines as lead-in lines, below, but decided they were too intrusive.
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In my head at the time, the principal aim in all of the photos was to try and capture the lovely soft light. The composition/content of the image was, I think, second to that aim, but if it didn’t work (and my wife would agree with you, not me, here, David!), I obviously didn’t achieve my aim! So in no.4, I saw the contrast between the bright light of the foreground fields and the light/shadows across the valley as points of contrast, complementing each other. Perhaps the far side of the valley needed more brightness and contrast (as in no.7) to take the eye across.

I take your point completely that no.8 is lacking a real point of focus, no.9 is possibly all leading line and not much else, cropping out the wall in no.10 takes nothing away except a potential distraction; and I let the house in the woods in no.12 fool me into thinking there was something sufficiently interesting in the middle ground, but that’s not really the case, so I should have binned that one!

I like no.11, but then I know what I’m looking at there!

Finally, for no.13, I think I got carried away by the lovely light/colour in the two bushes on either side. I did take another which I didn’t post, but which may well be the one I should have posted as it was taken from a slightly higher vantage point. Here it is:
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Anyway, thanks for taking the time for such a comprehensive comment - it's really appreciated. And I must find time to explore Padley Gorge - I tend to end up in the Dale area when I go walking with a pal down there.

Best wishes,
John
davidstorm
Posted 23/12/2021 - 23:09 Link
Hi John

I didn't mean to be too severe, I sometimes think that I and others often glance over images and don't take the time to really look at them. As I had some time last night I thought that I would try and post some meaningful feedback, which I think is more rarely seen on the forum than it used to be. I hope it didn't hit too hard, these are just my own opinions, which really mean nothing in the scheme of things as we all see things so differently. I didn't have the insight of what was your main objective when taking the shots, so I just commented on them as pure images.

I often wish more people would provide critical comment on my images as this is how I learn.

Hope you are well, have a great Christmas and New Year.

Kind Regards
David
Flickr

Nicola's Apartments, Kassiopi, Corfu

Some cameras, some lenses, some bits 'n' bobs

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