Rowllocks - nothing worked!

[wilgk]

Did you ever have 1 of those days, where you had a plan in mind and things seemed to be ok at the time, yet upon close inspection back at HQ you liked none of them?

Well that was my Sunday afternoon, even now with the benefit of the retrospectoscope, I can't get a feel for what i should have done. Other than of course to get back indoors to my low light havens and hide in the shadows where I belong

My idea for #1 - was "Breath of a Storm"

I was trying to combine my local windmill haunt with storm clouds.



and # 2- was an idea to revisit the local farm landscape being eaten up by the voracious insatiable monsters - again, this 1 just left me feeling it was a bit of a sandwich short of a picnic..



I don't get the message I wanted to convey from either of them, so surely no-one else will ....but if the Scotsman can bravely show us the face above the kilt, then I can share the results of a day I wasn't happy with.
I did still get away from the teenagers on my own, so all was not lost
A nice glass of red tonight & all will be well again.

[David]

Kay - you seem to imply that you have days when things go according to plan - unusual for me.

The critical points are in #1: first, divided attention - the eye is lead to the left by the fence and to the centre/right by the path through the grass. Both ways eventually take the eye to the small pond which is OK. Second, distraction - the telephone pole on the LHS dominates the LHS whereas ideally you would have wanted that nearer the vertical "third". I think the photographer would have looked for a diffent compostion here by moving somewhere else, perhaps to the left. Interestingly, an artist, say an Impressionist, would have had little trouble with this scene. Artistic licence would have moved the pole, and use of colour and light would emphasise one of the two pathways, probably the centre one, while allowing the eye to discover a second path in due course.

In #2 the problem is inappropriate sizing. I've taken lots of similar shots in rural Scotland where I wanted to show the mechanical monster in the idyllic countryside - almost always with poor results. The huge mechanised roller needs to be seen both as big and small - big in itself yet small in the vastness of its surroundings. Stepping back to give space on the RHS might do this or a different camera angle. Also, some intermediate sized object to give a more measured scale could help.

David

[Colin Southern]

Thought of the day Kay - "don't be afraid to shoot long" sometimes. Rather than look at the who scene in front of you (which may not work), instead, you can train your eye to spot a smaller portion of it that may work very well.

My article here gives a bit more insite into what I mean.