lf-photo.org.uk

Hello folks,
I would appreciate some opinions on the pic:

It's the stumpy end of some basalt columns times 4.
Any comments are welcome, but to make things easy I have set up a poll (anonymous). Unfortunately you can only choose one option.
Thanks,
Charles

Charles,

I have now had the opportunity to see the original image, and I think I prefer that one to the mirroed version. I can see how the doctored one could end up on someones livingroom wall, but I personally don't really care for it. It is too busy and I'm always trying to make thinfs fit together and looking for patterns within the repetition.

The original is quite good, although I would have shot it at a less oblique angle (i.e. more downwards than forward, if that makes sense). I would also increase the contrast just a wee bit. It seems to be around grade 2 at the moment and I'd probably print it at grade 3 or 3.5

Might i extoll the virtues of a square crop here again, or am I going to be pelted with large pieces of basalt?

Seriously, take a look at the original and crop out the foreground until you have a square. Let me know what you think...

Marc

Much as you deserve a basalting, we still need you, so I won't.
Besides which, you're on to something. The original shot (with added contrast) is:

It was composed within the 5x4 frame and I did my best for it to work. Two things that mattered to me: getting the suggestion of a straight line at the top and having a single, whole, large hexagon to act as feature at the bottom. I agree that a large helium-filled balloon would have made an ideal accessory but Calumet (Iceland) were out of stock. So very hard to get a more zenithal view-point. More importantly, the more zenithal view would have made the picture quasi-featureless. Making the picture square gives a lot of importance to the round tile which I don't like but which I could not compose out. So cropping to square is out too. However, making the mirrored picture square is a good idea as it reinforces the symmetry:

The mirrored picture is thus tidied up nicely, IMO. It's got more of the psychedelic teleidoscope feel to it. Playful rather than childish, I hope. I quite like the effect overall. Any more opinions?
Besides, to comment your point, isn't finding patterns in a photograph the very basis of composition? Isn't providing potential patterns what we are meant to be doing as photographers?
Charles

I thought we do serious discussions on photography here! For me photography is the story of the reality! There is no reason to false that fact with any manipulated images!

Fortunately, photography is the most inclusive of all arts, so we can play to our heart's content. I think Marc is right about the living room wall factor ... have you tried converting it with a tortoiseshell toning? Hallmark would love that.

I go for the cropped square - you got contrast, flaunt it !

Well U(NO3)2 is meant to be bright when shaken (triboluminescence), but if U(NO3)2 were serious then s/he'd know that a photograph is a new reality divorced from the reality that stood before his/her camera. There are many reasons why pictures do little more than reflect reality (all sufficiently well know to all of us here that I need not bore you). I will just say it didn't seem to bother U(NO3)2 that the picture was in B&W; or maybe one doesn't have colour vision when one is positively radioactive?
Charles

Now I’m dead! Because my thru identity is revelled! Here I stand naked in a front of you! U(NO3)2 and waiting for the doom! But forget me not as I’m still going to hold hold prisoners a long time after while I’m gone.

"Now I’m dead! Because my thru identity is revelled! Here I stand naked in a front of you! U(NO3)2 and waiting for the doom! But forget me not as I’m still going to hold hold prisoners a long time after while I’m gone."

What?!
Gari