Good one. But I don’t like to provide captions or titles or even background info. If flatulence is what the image suggests to a viewer, that’s fine. The next person may get something else from it.
I think the grey windswept desolation works well as is. It just needs a caption to set the right tone.
View attachment 346490
Good one. But I don’t like to provide captions or titles or even background info. If flatulence is what the image suggests to a viewer, that’s fine. The next person may get something else from it.
Yes, I agree with Don_ih, first of all, I would crop the picture. But I would crop it like this. Now I can't print behind an enlarger, but in those days when I typed with a mask or with my hands, I would shade the sky and some areas of the edges a little. I would print on photographic paper "Bromportrait" Something like this)))View attachment 346601
Don’t you think that transfers interest away from the two figures to the steps and the thin path that trails off into the distance?
Anyway, please no more cropping suggestions: see post #9.
Interesting and helpful ideas, thanks. I should probably have said at the outset that both partial and 100% cropping are options I don’t want to consider!So actually the first few suggestions are what I needed to hear.
The fact that several of you suggested cropping illustrates the problem: that unless I can emphasise it by printing you will miss the point. This was taken at the highest point in Brittany (France), a site used by the occupying German army in WW2 as a radio station. It’s a wide, desolate landscape, much cut about by man - not at all the kind of thing I had expected to see in Brittany. These two guys could have been war historians or pilgrims or lepidopterists for all I know, but they had chosen to turn their backs on the little chapel, the disconcerting gun emplacements and the other tourists, and instead to sit apart looking out over this barely-covered rockscape and overcast sky.
If the point is lost, this photo is for the bin. But I still need to learn to deal with those overly-uniform tones, because this is a problem I face too often. This will do as an learning-piece. I will try split-grade along the lines suggested and see what I can achieve.
Frankly, the point is lost. It's two guys who's faces you can't see, sitting in a drab landscape with snow here and there causing a cluttered look. No one would guess there are gun emplacements, chapels or anything else that denotes the location and adds drama and a sense of place. Those should have been in the shot. Photoshop can't dress it up.
On reflection, perhaps I should have said ‘darkroom print’ in the title. Maybe a moderator could fix that for me?
Frankly, the point is lost. It's two guys who's faces you can't see, sitting in a drab landscape with snow here and there causing a cluttered look. No one would guess there are gun emplacements, chapels or anything else that denotes the location and adds drama and a sense of place. Those should have been in the shot. Photoshop can't dress it up.
Frankly, the point is lost. It's two guys who's faces you can't see, sitting in a drab landscape with snow here and there causing a cluttered look. No one would guess there are gun emplacements, chapels or anything else that denotes the location and adds drama and a sense of place. Those should have been in the shot. Photoshop can't dress it up.
There's something reflective about it, not dramatic.
I don't think it's a dud
I would not change the horizon. Any place with hills or mountains does not have a straight line horizon.
In another circumstance I would agree with you. Except here, it's not the natural inclination of the horizon, but the OP's camera that was slightly tilted when he took the picture. If you look at the edge of the promontory on which they are sitting, as well as the edge of the top of the stairs, they all have the same inclination. To me, it give an unnatural imbalance to the whole, a slight tilt enough to make it seem like the right part of the photo is heavier than the left. It's enough to give the picture a tension it doesn't have, or shouldn't have. Putting it all straight makes it more peaceful.
I think that the way that the OP posted it originally resulted in the posts appearing vertical,
As Matt just said.... the posts are vertical in the original image. I
That’s fine, Alan, I’m quite happy to see this one as a failure. Heaven knows, I am used to that.
But I didn’t ask for judgement of the image, I just asked how you would print it (ie darkroom print) to bring out the sense of distance among what seem to me to be very similar tones. It’s all a fun learning exercise for me, always has been.
On reflection, perhaps I should have said ‘darkroom print’ in the title. Maybe a moderator could fix that for me?
The posts are off vertical the same degree the steps are off horizontal. Here they are rotated:
View attachment 346662
But levelling that makes the ground to the go downhill.
The consensus has been mostly to darken the image - what if you just reduced contrast:
View attachment 346663
and burned in those guys at higher contrast? (And dodge the rocks they're sitting on)
Looks rather dull to me that way.
I think that the way that the OP posted it originally resulted in the posts appearing vertical, so I didn't consider straightening it.
I don't either.
And, other than the two men with their back turned, there is another subtle element of mystery and drama: the steps on the left. Aren't they strange? I find them fascinating. Did they use to lead into a structure? They have to have had that use, as there is no need for steps to go to where the two men are sitting. But if so, why is it that there seems to be nothing left of it, apart from these few steps? Apart from the short black stakes, they are the only man-made element in the whole photo. They seem old, and therefore must have a history—but that history, as they are without context, is untranslatable into story. It is reduced to its essential element: time, time passing.
If i saw the scene like this i doubt whether i would have lifted my camera.
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