I like the idea here but I feel the bridge calls out for some more detail to be visible.
There is a lot of black and near black and a lot of white and near white in the image; and the subject through the bridge is not as strong the framing of it.
So overall it does not work too well for me. Sorry, Peter.
Sorry, but this image doesn't work for me.
Not a lot of black, but a lot of "near black" by my book: a lot between values of 10 and 30, and more between 30 and 40. What I mean by "near black" is that at least on my monitor, I can only with difficulty see small differences in tone. For example, I have to look very hard to see variations in the sides of the bridge. It would be fine for them to have little detail if they were just framing, but they constitute a lot of the photo. In addition, it's hard to see details in the subjects under the bridge. I can't tell what kind of animals they are, and I can't easily differentiate between the end of the animals and the beginning of their shadows.
In addition, the out of focus foreground doesn't help.
All in all, it seems like a good idea to me, but the execution doesn't work for me.
As regular contributors will more than likely know, I am not well versed in the technical jargon. I had hoped that, by couching my comment above in the way that I did, I had indicated I was not being particularly precise but wished to simply convey my impressions. They were subjective qualitative comments about the way I perceived the image and were certainly not based on, nor meant to imply, any scientific quantitative analysis on my part.
I have always treated the histogram as a useful tool that can assist the photographer at the point of reviewing the shot (whether in camera or when post processing the image) rather than as a measure to be slavishly interrogated.
Generally in life point scoring seldom helps anyone, and I agree with Grahame's recent comment in this regard. While erroneous posts may need to be challenged and different opinions may be presented, let's keep CiC a supportive and non-confrontational community.
If you think this is an over-reaction on my part, I apologise right now. It is not intended to fan the flames, quite the opposite.
Last edited by xpatUSA; 24th February 2019 at 12:12 AM.
Thanks for the opinions on this. i was a bit disappointed with the result myself. This was one of those scenes which looked wonderful to the eye. The late afternoon sun was at the 11 o'clock position and reflections from the water combined with haze made a very striking dreamy view through the bridge. I only had two frames left on the roll so was unable to bracket the exposures.
The picture did not live up to my expectations. Perhaps I should have used my iphone instead.
It looks like Ilford have major problems with their developing process and scanning techniques, Peter. Better email them a link to this thread so they can see where they have gone wrong.
I think this image might be trying to do too much. Either it is a picture of the bridge with cows grazing in the distance, or a picture of cows grazing, framed by the bridge. I would opt for the latter and zoom in a lot closer so that the bridge occupied a much smaller proportion of the area. Alternatively, you could dry zooming out so that the cow are became a smaller part of the scene and the foreground became the main area of interest. Just the humble opinion of someone who judges an image by aesthetics.
Not quite sure where things went off track here, but I hope I didn't inadvertently contribute to it. I was simply trying to explain why the image doesn't work for me, and I intended that to be constructive criticism. I do reference numbers, not to throw numbers around, but because those numbers help me understand the image.