Author Topic: Results and Feedback for the "Sense of Place" Weekly Photography Assignment  (Read 2227 times)

keithsnell

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The guidelines for this assignment were to compose images that describe what is unique about a location, and are infused with a mood or feeling that reflect the ambiance a person would experience when visiting that location.  Including symbolic elements or items unique to a location can help describe that location to your viewers, and emphasizing certain attributes of the scene (color, light, motion, depth, etc.) can help convey the ambiance or mood one would experience while visiting that location.  "Sense of place" is often tightly linked to culture and can also be conveyed by including people in the scene and illustrating how they relate to or behave within that place.  


Chris' two images of the tornado damage in his hometown definitely portrayed a sense of place.  Chris did a great job photographing both of these scenes with roiling clouds in the background.  I'm probably stating the obvious when I say that these scenes would not have conveyed the same feeling if they had been shot under blue skies.  Nice job Chris.  (And I'm glad all of your family is OK.)


Tree
Photographed by Chris Franklin



Building
Photographed by Chris Franklin


Lorin's image of Ft Garland intrigued me.  At first I wondered why he composed the image so the tents and soldiers were so small, then I noticed some of the details on the flag pole, like the "viewing platform"?  Whoa! I don't have a fear of heights but I still don't think I would have wanted to be the one up there relaying the course of the battle down to the commander on the ground.  Although I didn't see it initially, this was a great "prop" for getting me to think about the scene as it would have been back in the Civil War.  Nicely done Lorin.


Fort Garland CO
Photographed by Lorin Schroeder (wildshutter)


Julie's image of Snow Graffiti - Bringing Out The Inner Child definitely brought back memories of visiting Trail Ridge Road after one of the heavy snow years.  I can remember driving under the overhanging snow and how small it made you feel.  This image did a great job at capturing the feeling of being in such an amazing place.  Snapping the shutter at the moment the Dad was reaching into the snow (and capturing his dynamic body position) was the key to making this image a success.


Snow Graffiti - Bringing Out The Inner Child
Photographed by Julie Schroeder


I enjoyed seeing Julie's picture of The Watering Hole too.  What makes this image unique is that both the sheep and elk are there at the same time.  (Usually you see one or the other, and it's not that common to see sheep at the lake.)  This image does appear to be a bit "blown out" on the hide of the elk and sheep, so perhaps using negative exposure compensation would have helped control the strong light and allowed Julie to retain more detail in the fur of the animals.  I do like that Julie framed the scene with enough space in front of the elk so that it didn't seem like it was walking out of the frame.


The Watering Hole
Photographed by Julie Schroeder


Alan's image titled Unspoiled provided a wonderful sense of place, and made me with I were there (instead of behind a computer).  The strong backlighting from the sun is what created the rich green colors in the grass, unfortunately it also created a very high contrast scene, and I commend Alan for handling it so well.  It was smart to eliminate as much of the sky as possible, but keeping the small patch of sky in the upper left definitely contributed to the depth in this scene.  My first impression was that this area of the sky was so bright and contrasty that is stole the viewer's attention away from the rest of the scene, so I opened the image in Photoshop and used an exposure adjustment (and layer masks) to lower the exposure for that part of the scene.  While I had the image open in Photoshop I used a brightness adjustment to bring up the greens and then added a bit of selective sharpening to the grass and shrubs, being careful not to over-sharpen the water.  I've added that image below the original so that you can see the effect of the changes.



Unspoiled
Photographed by Alan Albrecht (Ribot)



Unspoiled
Photographed by Alan Albrecht (Ribot), tonal adjustments and selective sharpening added


Although Rick's Soccer match image provided a great sense of place, I would never have guessed that it was in Colorado.  The image looks very European to me, with a couple of the guys looking very English.  We usually don't see a 300mm telephoto lens shot at f10 for action shots, but in this case it worked very well to keep all the boys in sharp enough focus that their expressions contributed to the overall success of the image.  Nice.


Soccer match
Photographed by Rick Pepin (TrvlRick)


Michele's Flower stand image definitely portrays a sense of place.  Both the architecture and the rolling green hills say "Switzerland" to me, so I like that Michele placed the flower stand in the frame so that the viewer could also see the green hills (and other Swiss architecture) in the background.  Beautiful!


Flower stand
Photographed by Michele Bollhalder


Luc did a great job capturing the mist in his image titled Trees in summer mist at the top of the Creux du Vau cliff.  This is a wonderful composition that conveys peacefulness and makes me think that I would enjoy a leisurely walk through the mist.  Very nice Luc.


Trees in summer mist at the top of the Creux du Vau cliff
Photographed by Luc Bigler


One of the things that I find that can sometimes add more depth to images like this (and therefore more effectively draw the viewer into the scene), is to add just a touch of selective sharpening to the foreground elements.  This accentuates the perception of the mist softening the details as the scene recedes into the distance.  I've shown an example of that below.


Trees in summer mist at the top of the Creux du Vau cliff
Photographed by Luc Bigler, selective sharpening added


Luc's series of images of the cloister and church of St. Ursanne were captivating to me, and made me want to travel and visit great places like this again.  Luc mentioned that he likes returning to St Ursanne because he can sense the peace.  I too have felt the "aura" of history when I have visited ancient places like this.  Luc's image titled reflections of tranquillity is my favorite.  The light on the walkway provides depth and serves to draw the viewer deep into the scene.  I can imaging myself walking along the stone walkway, footsteps echoing through the alcove...  I think Luc did an amazing job exposing this high-contrast scene.  He managed to keep the sunlight on the walkway from blowing out, while still providing enough light on the inside walls that you can see the architectural details.  Very nicely done, and deserving of Editor's Choice for Technical Merit.


reflections of tranquillity
Editor's Choice for Technical Merit
Photographed by Luc Bigler



cloister and church of St. Ursanne, Switzerland
Photographed by Luc Bigler



overall view of cloister and church of St. Ursanne, Switzerland
Photographed by Luc Bigler


Thank you to everyone that voted for my Mendenhall Glacier image for People's Choice.  This was a great chance for me to experiment with the 200-400mm lens.  I found that I had to use very good technique to get sharp images.  I got the best results by shooting at a higher shutter speed, turning off image stabilization (vibration reduction), locking the system down tight on a tripod, and using a cable release with mirror lockup.  Luckily I "anticipated" this shot, so I was ready when the kayaker rowed into the scene.


Mendenhall Glacier
People's Choice
Photographed by Keith


Marilyn's images of Glacier Bay and Denali were all very beautiful; however, as sometimes happens when there is a lot of haze in the atmosphere, the images didn't have enough contrast, and therefore looked "flat" and gray.  By bumping up the contrast (using curves) and adjusting the brightness, I was able to match the rendition better to the way I remembered these scenes in real life.  I also "painted in" selective sharpening in a few of the scenes to accentuate the detail in specific areas.  I've uploaded the modified images directly after Marilyn's submissions so that you can compare the differences.  Sometimes images do need post processing in order to render the scene the way you saw it.


Glacier Bay
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney



Glacier Bay
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney, contrast and brightness adjusted



Serenity in College Fjord
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney



Serenity in College Fjord
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney, contrast and brightness adjusted



Calving Glacier
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney



Calving Glacier
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney, contrast and brightness adjusted



Mt. McKinley/Denali
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney



Mt. McKinley/Denali
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney, contrast adjusted


When she uploaded her Greens of Kenai image in the gallery, Marilyn commented that "One of our favorite spots on the land tour was Kenai. The many shades of green were just astounding.  Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to not blow out the sky and haven't had time to go through too many photos yet but wanted to share the sense of spring green that added to the allure of the Kenai peninsula area."  I agree that the many shades of green are very beautiful, and yes, it's true that this image is overexposed.  There are a couple of ways to handle this situation.  One is to continue to dial in negative exposure compensation and checking the LCD and histogram until you get the image dark enough to avoid blowing out the sky.  Another way would be to use manual exposure, spot meter on the sky and place it at about +1 on the exposure scale.  A third way would be to remember the "sunny sixteen" rule, and manually set your exposure with a shutter speed/aperture combination equivalent to 1/100 sec and f16 (at an ISO of 100).  I would have probably chosen an aperture of f11 and a shutter speed of 1/200 sec as the "optimum" settings for this scene (with an ISO of 100).


Greens of Kenai
Photographed by Marilyn McKinney


Michele's image of Brothers was extremely well executed, with excellent exposure, focus and clarity.  (And a very good composition too!)  How did you get the goats to pose like that for you Michele?


Brothers
Photographed by Michele Bollhalder


Michele's Farm life image was a great little vignette that illustrated how a small portion of a scene could be used very effectively to give a "sense of place."  I liked the almost monochromatic tones of this image, and am glad that Michele chose to let the shadows go dark (with just a hint of detail at the far end of the stall).  I think the dark shadows add realism to the scene and help me imagine that I am peering into the horse barn.  (I can almost smell the horses.)  The "swish" of the tail definitely contributes to the overall composition.  Very well done Michele.


Farm life
Photographed by Michele Bollhalder


I also thought Rebecca's image of Juneau - Alaska capital and cruise ship capital was very well done.  She manage to capture the "essence" of Juneau in this one shot, with its contrast between fishing village and modern city, and "cruise ship capital" and tourist areas surrounded by pristine mountain wilderness.  

Our "default" settings that we left on the camera (so that we could grab it quickly and shoot) were f10 and auto ISO set with a minimum shutter speed of 1/250 specified in the auto ISO settings.  This would give us a "default" aperture that would maximize our depth of field without being so small that diffraction would start to soften the image, and would give us a shutter speed that was fast enough to stop most motion blur due to hand-holding or shooting from a moving ship.  We also left a negative exposure compensation of either -0.3 or -0.7 depending on how contrasty the light was.  You can see that for this scene the auto ISO kicked in to bump the ISO up slightly (to 140) in order to meet our aperture and shutter speed requirements.  We changed our settings as we needed to, but these "default" settings were a good starting point when we grabbed the camera for a quick shot.


Juneau - Alaska capital and cruise ship capital
Photographed by Rebecca


Chris' image of the Kansas Roadside is another simple image that is "more than the sum of its parts."  The wonderful light, rich colors and elegant composition all come together to produce a rich and inviting "sense of place" that is true to Kansas.  Something as simple as the light skimming across the top of the dirt on the side of the road adds a sense of "time and place" that sets this image apart.  I love the detail in the grass and the "wide and close" perspective that accentuates the converging lines of the road so that they propel the viewer deep into the scene.  Simple, elegant, beautiful composition, and Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit.


Kansas Roadside
Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit
Photographed by Chris Franklin


Thank you again to everyone that participated in this assignment.  I really enjoyed seeing all these wonderful and amazing places through your eyes.  I'm sorry it took me so long to provide feedback on these assignments (there were a lot of images to "play" with. :) )

Thanks again, I want to see more!

Keith
« Last Edit: June 21, 2011, 07:17:44 PM by keithsnell »

Chris

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Wow! Thank you Keith. I could not have done it without Dave's Photoshop lessons. Thanks Dave. Thanks to everyone else here that has helped me get from where I started to where I am now. I'm glad to have improved enough to make pictures everyone can enjoy.

Michele

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Thank you, Keith, for all the information and feedback.  It's really motivating.  I, sadly, missed the assignment for the anti-HDR but will take it this week with the "S" assignment.  I have just been still overwhelmed with stuff (as I know others are too but still did the assignment.)

Ummm, did I miss some sort of workshop from Dave?  Any way I could have a look at some notes or stuff?

Michèle

prairiedust

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Chris and I spent a little time looking at my house looking at PhotoShop techniques - mostly use of masks, curves, some exposure blending.  He's developing quickly and doing great stuff so I'm glad to offer some support in any small way I can.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2011, 09:14:09 AM by prairiedust »
Dave Leiker (PrairieDust)
Exploring the Rural Midwest