Death Valley, 2003

True grit. Nice. tim

pleasant shot, but I cannot get much sense of the light over the monitor. Maybe this is just pixel probs, but was it shot early late? I feel that the modelling is missing. For me also a bit tight on the top edge cropping. Texture certainly leaps out at you tho.

It was made late morning (maybe 10 to 11Am) after a heavy rain the night before. The print has very soft tones (not flat though), and tones like that really never translate to the web.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------As I look at it now I wonder what would happen to the spaces if there was more sky. Not for the sake of having more sky, but becasue the tone of the sky is so close to that of the dunes. I could have created some interesting relationships between the two and played with the space in the photograph by doing so.

Nice shot, but maybe a little too much foreground.

Why do you think there might be too much foreground? With less foreground there would be less vertical movement connecting the top and bottom of the picture. Also, the ripples that start in the bottom right corner move more horizontal than vertical. By cutting those out it would you would not have anything to support the bottom edge. All of these things are more or less intuitively felt at the tine of exposure ( for example: the tiny dark triangle on the left edge). When printing and again when the photographed is finished those things are carefully analyzed in an objective way.

Richard,

Your response seems very analytical ! This comes back to some threads that I got involved in a while ago.......just because you intuitively felt something, does not mean it communicates that same magic to all viewers. You talk of intuition and then objective analysis. For most photogs there is a bit of both, we feel things and certainly on my part, try to make sense of these feelings. However, when someone else does not 'feel it', no amount of explanation will work. I do not mean this in a rude way, only I sense a cetain amount of indignation at some of the comments made, which I think are just friendly opinions, thats all. I do not think there is such a thing as required reading to be serious either, esp as I think CBs writings are unlikely to transpose perfectly into LF photography. Have you spent time studying under Michael Smith? I am not prodding, just curious.

I just happened across this, and being an old post no one will probably read it but what the hell...

I don't think Richard's response was indignant at all. He is simply asking for SOME kind of explanation. "Nice shot, but maybe a little too much foreground." is a cop out. Not that saying you don't like something or suggesting a change is bad, quite the contrary. But to say something like that and give no further explanation... why say anything. I think Richard simply takes his work seriously. As for analytical thought vs intuition, I believe any good picture requires some of both and don't see how Richard, in any way, suggested otherwise.

I'd better go to bed now. I get pissy when I'm tired. doc