Steve Orrell said:thenmc.org.ukNorthumberlandOpen ↗
The first two pics on the page. Both of these are taken at a local Country Park, Plessey Woods
which was about as far as I could get in the conditions on Saturday, popping in on my way back
from the shops!
The first one is a nice mixture of tree shapes and colours, a pleasing arrangement. Surely not a
pano though? The only problem with this shot IMO is the magenta cast in the shadow. I'd use Replace
Colour to select the magenta shadow and alter the hue or reduce the saturation to give it a more
neutral shade (or blue).
The Plessey pano is also pleasing on the eye, nice lines in the picture. I'd probably chop the
left hand edge of the pano off, so that the fence leads directly to the corner of the pic. The
mess of trees on the left hand edge doesn't add anything IMO and the pano would look much neater
without I think.
I know it's hard to crop panos after you've taken them, because it makes them less panoramic. I've
tried to get into the habit of taking a wider pano than I actually want, because on a number of
occasions I'd wished I'd taken more shots than I had. The logic being that if I take more than I
want I can always crop it later, but I've then found that it's tempting to keep it, because it shows
more of the area. Question is, do you want to show the maximum area, or do you want the best looking
image? Often a hard choice, but shorter panos make better prints.
Quoted message said:(Winter's Gibbet was taken a few weeks ago - it was a nightmare to try and rescue the foreground,
only made remotely feasible with that PS contrast thingummy)
Nice sky. Always a problem shooting into the sun as part of a pano.
Quoted message said:On Sunday I headed up into the Cheviots, trying to get up toward the head of Coquetdale but the
roads were not having it. So I revisited Clennell Street, and hence have bundled a few pics in
with those from an earlier trip;
thenmc.org.ukClennell StreetOpen ↗
Some of the pics don't have thumbnails.
Quoted message said:As I said, feedback would be appreciated if you've a minute, on both technical (loadsa errors, I
accept that) and arty fartyness.
feint to the east
Interesting minimalist approach, but a bit too much detail in the background. Unfortunately the
background shapes seem a bit formless to me, they don't seem to make an interesting composition. A
simple line of trees might have worked better, or a featureless ridge. Foreground snow could be a
bit whiter. Promising idea but it just doesn't seem to work in this case.
February 29th crusted snow
Nice, good exposure. I don't like the trees on the right though. Some may argue that it gives the
picture balance, but I find them distracting. If you cloned them out or chopped them off you could
be in the arctic tundra somewhere. The trees spoil the impression of bleak icy wilderness IMO.
Nice textures.
February 29th - toward Coquetdale
Good exposure, nice textures and colours. Doesn't seem to be anything strong in the composition
though. Perhaps if you'd taken it more to the right and lower down you could have made the path
sweep through the picture from the left hand edge. Maybe a telephoto shot of the interesting slopes
in the middle of the pic would have worked well, with a better foreground.
leeward cornice
I'd have gone closer to the edge to see more of the slope, and to make the foreground edge go
into the corner of the frame, and to get rid of the footprints. I don't like footprints in the
snow. Some do.
scalloping
Very nice, I like this one. Good clean composition in the foreground with the gate and shadow. Only
thing that spoils it are the formless clouds, no real shape in them, just a random mess (boring
clouds are often a problem). Of course, if you'd stayed there a few hours and watched the clouds
passing you might have been able to capture a really interesting cloud pattern which would elevate
the photo to another level. Or you could paste a different sky in, or perhaps even chop it off
completely to make a square composition (cutting it just above, or even below, the tops of the
trees). Snow could be a bit whiter too.
whiteboard?
Very nice also, and no problem with clouds. Cropped a little too tightly on the left hand edge for
my liking. It's nice the way the gate shadow leads to the bottom right hand corner, but a pity about
the marks in the snow (which you could clone out with a bit of effort).
hare today
Hmm... Interesting "sod the rule of thirds" composition. Very minimalist but there are some small
details spoling it, like the little jet trail and the small cloud. You really should clone those out
for a pure blue sky. Also there's a couple of marks touching the bottom edge of the photo, I'd get
rid of those, and those odd blades of grass on the left hand edge. Whiten the snow a little and
you've got a very arty minimalist shot. Pity the horizon isn't completely straight, that would make
it very arty indeed. I'm sure some art connoisseurs could read a lot of pretentious [censored] into
this pic, perhaps something to do with balancing tranquility with purity or whatever. It might even
work better with no tracks, no grass, no nothing, just pure snow.
Paul
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