Industrial heritage

[Chataignier]

A view of the watermill at Forge Savignac Ledrier on the river Auvezere in central France. The site was the last in the region to cease activity - in the 1960s. Built in 1520, it originally produced iron from local ore using a wood/charcoal fired furnace, the water mill provided power for the bellows that aspirated the fire. More recently the mill powered a small factory making domestic articles from bought-in steel.

[Geoff F]

Looks good. That image has a wide range of tones but nothing is under or over exposed.

[pschlute]

Beautiful David

[DanK]

I really like this. It's almost haunting. However, I've come back to it repeatedly, and I find that my eye goes right to the top, which is far brighter and has far more contrast than anything else in the image. I assume you want the center of attention to be the structure. Also, the high contrast at the top detracts from the otherwise hazy, moody feeling of the photo, which I think is part of it's strength.

If it were mine, I'd try to downplay the top and accentuate the building. I think this would require mostly just judicious local burning and dodging, but I think I would also take a little off the top, placing the foundation line about 1/3 of the way from the bottom. Here's a very quick edit, not nearly enough to do justice to this, but maybe enough to show the directions I would try:

[billtils]

I liked the original but Dan's edit even more.

[Round Tuit]

Beautifully captured scene David. I agree with Dan's edits and I would also suggest burning down the grass on the right of the mill.

[Chataignier]

I agree with Dan's suggestions, I actually implemented them before he even made them !

In the first version I posted the top was already burned down quite a bit, the mill building was dodged and even the grass on the right was burned down as has been suggested. I guess I didnt go far enough is the general conclusion.

Very busy this weekend with our local Christmas market, but I'll take another look at it next week.

[Manfred M]

The well-known Canadian landscape photographers often eliminates the sky in his work. I often do that in my landscape photography as well.

Here is a slightly different edit on your image. I found that the bright yellow leaves on the top left draw a bit too much attention.

[Round Tuit]

I don't often disagree with Manfred but in this case I think that the leaves provide an increased sense of depth to the picture. They are the first thing that the eyes are attracted to but the mill quickly pulls them away.

[DanK]

This image leads to lots of different options. It's a very good one for prompting discussions about compositional and editing preferences.

My personal preferences:

I agree with Manfred about dodging in the bottom right. It was on my list, but I just wanted to do something quick to show the what I thought were the main points.

Re the leaves: I too found them a bit distracting because they are alone on an edge, but I think I would desaturate them a bit but not get rid of the yellow.

Re the sky--I would tone it down more than I did in my crude edit, and I would probably crop more, but I'm ambivalent about removing it altogether. Removing it creates a very different image, one that is focused more on the building and less on the environment it's in. I honestly don't know which I prefer.

There are artists who deliberately do the reverse of what Manfred suggests, not just including skies, but sometimes deliberately using them as contrast to a subdued landscape. A fairly extreme example is Nikolai Astrup's, A Clear Night in June, which I saw a few years ago at the Clark Art Institute: https://dbgetvisual.blogspot.com/202...-at-clark.html. It creates a different sort of image.

[billtils]

Dan, I agree with everything that you say here (and thanks for the reference to "A Clear Night in June" - liked it but wonder if you meant not just the sky but the sky + mountains?)

[DanK]

Bill,

In that case, I meant the sky vs everything else. Note that he also violated the “rule” that one shouldn’t put bright areas on an edge. Usually, that’s good advice. But not always.

Dan


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Manfred M]

I don't often disagree with Manfred but in this case I think that the leaves provide an increased sense of depth to the picture. They are the first thing that the eyes are attracted to but the mill quickly pulls them away.

In a "quick & dirty" edit when critiquing works of others on this site, I tend to prioritize speed over creating a completely finessed final image, in order to present the idea, rather than other options. I would agree that burning down the leaves would be worth considering. Either approach would work.

[Manfred M]

I find that Astrup's work clearly demonstrates why placing the brightest areas near the edges of the image doesn't work well.

That may just be my personal taste. Research (on paintings) started by Soviet era psychologist Alfred Yarbus in the 1950s and 1960s clearly shows the underlying human vision system's physiology as to why this approach is not ideal. This work was done decades after Astrup's death.

https://www.graphics.cornell.edu/aca...ual_System.pdf


The area covering this starts at slide 55.

[DanK]

Well, I count a large exhibit at the Clark, which is one of the premier art museums in the US, as indicating it worked fine in that particular case . What you're referring to is that the eye goes to bright and high contrast material. That suggests that most of us, most of the time, should avoid bright or high contrast material on edges, but it doesn't mean that artists can never successfully use bright areas on edges. Another artist who violated this rule is Olivia Parker, who was a successful and remarkably creative photographer. (The story is that Ansel Adams disparaged selenium half toning until he saw Parker's. He then invited her to teach with him, which she did for years.)

My mother, who at one point in her life was a musician, said something apropos, although about music. When I was young and had just discovered jazz (she was a classical musician), I had a conversation with her about musicians breaking the rules. Her reply: you need to know the rules to break them successfully.

[Manfred M]

Well, I count a large exhibit at the Clark, which is one of the premier art museums in the US, as indicating it worked fine in that particular case . What you're referring to is that the eye goes to bright and high contrast material. That suggests that most of us, most of the time, should avoid bright or high contrast material on edges, but it doesn't mean that artists can never successfully use bright areas on edges. Another artist who violated this rule is Olivia Parker, who was a successful and remarkably creative photographer. (The story is that Ansel Adams disparaged selenium half toning until he saw Parker's. He then invited her to teach with him, which she did for years.)

My mother, who at one point in her life was a musician, said something apropos, although about music. When I was young and had just discovered jazz (she was a classical musician), I had a conversation with her about musicians breaking the rules. Her reply: you need to know the rules to break them successfully.

Dan - This is why I mentioned "personal taste". I find that Astrup's "Clear night in June" does not work for me, simply because the sky draws too much attention, as does the stream running along the bottom. It detracts from the central elements of the image. That may have been the artist's intent.

I'm not a fan of Ansel Adam's "Moonrise - Hernandez, New Mexico", even though others rave about it. Ditto with Karsh's portrait of Churchill; while it is a strong image, there are things about it that could have been done better. In both these cases, the stature of the photographer overshadows some issues I have with the way they executed those pieces.

When it comes to the "rules of composition"; I do my best to ignore them. I find that I have become a follower of Ernst Haas's quote "My theory of composition? Simple: do not release the shutter until everything in the viewfinder feels just right." I note that Haas says "feels right" rather than "looks right".

A good photograph only occurs when intuition and experience come together.

[DanK]

Dan - This is why I mentioned "personal taste". I find that Astrup's "Clear night in June" does not work for me, simply because the sky draws too much attention, as does the stream running along the bottom. It detracts from the central elements of the image. That may have been the artist's intent.

I'm not a fan of Ansel Adam's "Moonrise - Hernandez, New Mexico", even though others rave about it. Ditto with Karsh's portrait of Churchill; while it is a strong image, there are things about it that could have been done better. In both these cases, the stature of the photographer overshadows some issues I have with the way they executed those pieces.

When it comes to the "rules of composition"; I do my best to ignore them. I find that I have become a follower of Ernst Haas's quote "My theory of composition? Simple: do not release the shutter until everything in the viewfinder feels just right." I note that Haas says "feels right" rather than "looks right".

A good photograph only occurs when intuition and experience come together.

I am one who considers Moonrise Hernandez to be a masterpiece, independent of who created it.

However, I think we agree that it comes down to taste in the end. What clouds this is that "taste" sometimes veers into the absurd, like paying millions for a banana taped to a wall.

[billtils]

Maternal wisdom ...

[billtils]

A good photograph only occurs when intuition and experience come together.

Don't know about the "only" but no problems with the intuition + experience.

[Round Tuit]

In a "quick & dirty" edit when critiquing works of others on this site, I tend to prioritize speed over creating a completely finessed final image, in order to present the idea, rather than other options. I would agree that burning down the leaves would be worth considering. Either approach would work.

I did not intend to critique the finesse of your edit. What I disagree with is the need to either remove or tone down the yellow leaves.

Here is my take starting with Dan's version. I burned the grass, increased the redness of the two small tufts in the lower right corner and slightly desaturated the floating leaf on the left of the red tufts.