At the Bottom of The Queen's Staircase

Khaos

It's a staircase cut from a coral wall in Nassau.

Full size, this pic really shines. I was able to get a ton of detail from the wall. Smaller it doesn't work as well. Which makes me wonder, is it any good if it only looks good big?

If you rate it less than 3, please explain why and give suggestions. Thanks.

wholenewlight

Oooooh, nice . . . really nice!

Great range of greys and perfect contrast. I like the wide-angle perspective and the walking couple in the distance are a welcome addition.

The only thing i don't like is the thing that looks like a grey tin can (cement post??) in the foreground center. My eye want's to go right to it . . . Impossible to avoid while shooting - not sure if it's something you might want to manipulate out of the pic.

Gave it a 5 (probably more like a 4.5 if i had that choice). Pretty sweet .

prity goldfish

Good job it's got nice depth of field and leading line and good detail in the wall. the contrast is good but the only thing that i thought could have been a tid bit better was in the upper right hand corner where all the trees are it's super white and you lose some of the leaves on the trees but that's all, nothin major. i didn't even notice that little cement pole thing until wholenewlight pointed it out. good job!

Khaos

wholenewlight wrote:

Oooooh, nice . . . really nice!

Great range of greys and perfect contrast. I like the wide-angle perspective and the walking couple in the distance are a welcome addition.

The only thing i don't like is the thing that looks like a grey tin can (cement post??) in the foreground center. My eye want's to go right to it . . . Impossible to avoid while shooting - not sure if it's something you might want to manipulate out of the pic.

Gave it a 5 (probably more like a 4.5 if i had that choice). Pretty sweet .

Thank you.

I don't get drawn to it. My opinion is that if it's man made and you are doing a nature shot removing would be good. If it's in an area man made already. It would be "cheating" to remove it.

I'll think on it. Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.

Khaos

prity goldfish wrote:

Good job it's got nice depth of field and leading line and good detail in the wall. the contrast is good but the only thing that i thought could have been a tid bit better was in the upper right hand corner where all the trees are it's super white and you lose some of the leaves on the trees but that's all, nothin major. i didn't even notice that little cement pole thing until wholenewlight pointed it out. good job!

I agree on the light. It was late morning and full sun. To get the wall the way I wanted I was unable to compose with not bringing in the blown out area (well the area I knew that was going to be blown out). I feel cropping it out takes away too much, I just have to hope the viewer's eyes stay on the wall as it draws them further down to the walking couple.

marlof

I gave 3 for the image as is. I'd give minimum 4 for your efforts to make this image in spite of the circumstances you were in (light!). It's just that I love the wall (well done!), but am too distracted by the blown area to fully enjoy the picture. I don't think there's much (other than bracketing/shooting in RAW, and developing twice for sky and wall) you could do to avoid this though. I'd love to see a print of this, since there's lots of detail in it, and that might compensate so much for the blown areas that they'd bother me less. And now I'll stop rambling.

wholenewlight

I have no problem with your "blown" area. In the digital age, I think we critique'rs sometimes get hung up on the "blown" highlights phenomena (no doubt, a very real concern with modern imaging sensors). I noticed this critique hyper-sensitivity to "white,whites", a long time ago on DPReview. I certainly agree that a white egret, with white feathers that have no detail at all, is a major problem.

But I'm not buying a "blown" problem in your shot. Sometimes a photographer uses white to lead the viewer's eye down a path - like a leading line in a shot. That's how I view your shot. And sometimes white is just white - and the photographer wants that portion of his shot white. I believe this is especially true in B&W shots.


(this is not my shot! Whites but not blown highlights)

I played around with Ansel's "zone system" for a couple of years with medium format cameras and a 4X5 view camera. Using that system, pure white should only show real highlights (reflected actual light source, like reflections on water) but practical application included "near" whites without detail to convey the intended photographic message. I believe my thoughts are not completly off-base. But who knows?

Anyway, I see no problem with the bright area in your shot.

By the way . . . I wonder who gave you a "puke" score on this shot?? Someone must be having a real bad day.

ginger_55

I give it a five, and I have no problem with blown areas in most photographs.

I do have a problem with lack of details, any, in the shadows, different strokes, I guess.

I do like the Queen's staircase.

ginger

rutt

I tried to like this shot, but I couldn't get a handhold on it. The contrasty B&W and the wall texture are interesting, but for me they aren't enough to make the shot. It needs more context, a story, a hook. Perhaps printed really big the quality alone would be that hook, but not at smugmug large size.

I'd like to see some people in the foreground. I'd like to get a better idea of what the people in the background are doing (perhaps at a larger size this happens.)

I can imagine this shot working really well as an illustration for some text explaining about the history &etc of the site.

marlof

wholenewlight wrote:

But I'm not buying a "blown" problem in your shot.

If this is in response to my statement: I didn't call it a problem. It's just something that bothered *me* in a picture that I otherwise like a lot. I for sure can imagine that it doesn't bother others, as blown areas don't bother me "as a rule". It's just in this picture *I* find the contrast too big between the fine detail in the wall, and the white area. And I'm not talking that much about the white area at the end of the path, but the white area on the top right. It might be me, but I think I was asked for my personal opinion.

wholenewlight

marlof wrote:

If this is in response to my statement: I didn't call it a problem. It's just something that bothered *me* in a picture that I otherwise like a lot. I for sure can imagine that it doesn't bother others, as blown areas don't bother me "as a rule". It's just in this picture *I* find the contrast too big between the fine detail in the wall, and the white area. And I'm not talking that much about the white area at the end of the path, but the white area on the top right. It might be me, but I think I was asked for my personal opinion.

Sorry, This wasn't intended as a dump on you or anyone. I was soapbox'ing and re-thought it later.

Bright areas sometimes (not necessarily this time) get automatically viewed as "blown highlights". I didn't think it was a problem (for me) in this shot.

My view . . .your view . . . it's all subjective and I didn't mean to offer up a challenge to your valid viewpoint.

Peace

marlof

Peace. That's the thing: this commenting is all highly subjective. And I agree with you, some things are blown out of perspective. In my favorite photography magazine (the dutch p|f) a reviewer stated that he recently found all that discussion about high ISO noise irrelevant. He found that he managed to see great pictures, no matter of the noise. I loved that as a counterweight to all these pixelpeeping noise comparisons going on in the different forums. The same probably is true for "blown areas", where people even go with a color checker over images looking for 255s.