Margaretsville Lighthouse

[John 2]

Margaretsville is a small township in Nova Scotia that faces out onto the Bay of Fundy. Perfect holiday weather but difficult for photography.

Fuji X plus 18 - 55mm lens.

[bje07]

For me there are twos subjects trees and the lighthouse. You should make a choice

[LePetomane]

I'm with Jean and I would have taken shots of each as well. Nicely done.

[John 2]

Thanks Jean, thanks Paul. With a featureless blue sky, the lighthouse by itself would have bee slightly boring (and probably seen 100 times before) and so I was trying for something a little different.

[rpcrowe]

Great B&W conversion. I love the tonality. However, I wonder if snipping some area off of the bottom and image right might not be appropriate. For me, in this crop, the rocks act as leading lines pointing towards the lighthouse...

Of course, give a 100 photographers an image to crop and you will get a 100 different crops. It's all in the eye of the beholder!

[Mike Buckley]

You consistently use such nice toning in your monochromes and this image is a perfect example of that. My eye clearly sees the lighthouse as the subject and everything else in the image playing a supporting role.

The one small change I would make if the image was mine is that I would either allow some sky to appear above the wood or I would crop slightly to avoid the top of the wood being tangential with the top of the frame. Assuming you didn't capture sky above the wood, making the latter adjustment would take less time, so I would probably go with that.

[Wavelength]

Very nice; did you post a series of images from this spot, earlier?

[Mike Buckley]

About the discussion of the composition and whether the eye sees it as two images or one, consider master photographer Alfred Stieglitz's image, The Steerage. When he first showed the print, he got the feedback that the image was poor because of the notion that there are two images within the scene. He actually had very specific characteristics of the scene in mind that would take too long to explain here that unified everything in his mind to be one image rather than two. In fact, when he was racing to get his camera and return to the scene, he was afraid that if any one of those characteristics was no longer present upon his return, there would be no scene worth capturing.

Having gotten the initial negative feedback that was inconsistent with his own thinking, he put the image away for a few years. He later displayed it in his gallery and published it in the gallery's magazine. 110 years after he captured the scene, it is probably his most famous image.

[bnnrcn]

IMO Richard's edit improved the image John

[John 2]

Thanks all for the continued input.

Richard, this image is already heavily cropped but I clearly didn't go far enough. Your crop is more than a small improvement in that it emphasises the lighthouse more and the lead lines you refers to are a more effective compositional device than the framing approach I had in mind. I like the resulting image much more.

Mike, thanks for the vote of confidence. I doubt however, that I will be around in 110 years time to see if it is justified.

[Shadowman]

Nice shot.

[Tony M]

Hi John,

Your photo, and its composition, has quite a strong impact. I spent a long time viewing it, enjoying its sharpness, studying the forms in the wood, then in the rocks, observing the darker shaded one in the middle foreground. And every now and then moving to the lighthouse in the background. This photo has the quality of keeping the viewer's attention for a long time.

The second crop loses a lot of the impact of the first, in my opinion. To me, it is overly weighted to the left. I think it needs the rock at the right to give it balance. It also acts as a framing device to draw the viewer to the lighthouse. I don't see the wood and the lighthouse as competing elements.

Often time is needed to evaluate a photo well. Alfred Steiglitz would agree Come back to it in a week and see how you feel about it.

Tony

[IzzieK]

Hm...I like the original version too and had looked and looked at it. The view has its merit with the lighthouse being in the middle of the frame. I like the toning you did in it too, but if mine, I will just crop the bottom part a little bit as Richard had done and that would be it. Nice job, John.

[Rainforest]

I looked at this image a long time too. Love your blk and wht processing. Lots of good ideas for looking at it anew in the post as well. Maybe it's just me Richard but is it just a touch not straight? You may have been trying to preserve the stump edge at the top - it's looks just a wee bit off to my eye.

I wonder what this coastline will look like in 110 years...

[John 2]

Thanks John, Tony Izzie and Susan for the continued comment.

Tony, I was never really sure of my original composition and sometimes, that is the criterion for selecting a post. I do agree with you that the wood and the lighthouse do not compete but the attraction of Richards suggestion is that it simplifies the composition and I find that more satisfying. However, so does Izzie's suggestion of losing some of the weight at the base. So I am torn.

I also agree with the suggestion of leaving it for a few weeks and returning to the image. One of the people that most influenced me at the start of my interest in photography used to say "...once you have made a print that you think you like, put it up on the mantelpiece for a few days and see if you can live with it." I've always found that to be good advice over the years.

Alfred Steiglitz is an interesting comparison but as the reviewer on the linked site describes it, "The Steerage" is "...........a more straightforward depiction of quotidian life". In modern parlance, it is a piece of photo journalism that quite wonderfully, allows the viewer's eye to roam around the scene and appreciate the minutia of life in that context whereas this image is a landscape (Seascape?) and needs to hold together as such.

Susan, it's a difficult one because due to perspective, there are few if any truly horizontal lines to judge by. In a situation like that, I tend to go by the verticals on the basis that for instance for man made structures, someone has almost certainly used a spirit level somewhere. Not failsafe I know but that's what I have done here.

[Mike Buckley]

Alfred Steiglitz is an interesting comparison but...

I agree that the only important characteristic your and his image have in common is some viewers' first impressions that both images are essentially of two scenes presented within the same photo.

[Kaye Leggett]

I love it, very atmospheric and inviting... I have to confess an interest in going to The Bay of Fundy and this does nothing to dissuade me

[John 2]

Thanks Mike, thanks Kaye.

Kaye, put it on the list. We spent three weeks in Toronto and Nova Scotia last Autumn and it was probably the best holiday we have ever had. Of the three weeks, the ten days we spent exploring the coastline of the western half of NS, was the highlight. Quite stunning.