Wintery World

[selig1656]

From the car perspective
P1010296 edited by Raymond Friedman, on Flickr
The walk down the road
P1010443 edited by Raymond Friedman, on Flickr

[mugge]

I do think the first image has potential. Do get rid of that triangle bottom right corner.
Cheers Ole

[Manfred M]

The first one does not work at all for me. The only things that are sharp are the drops on the windshield.

The second one is more interesting, although the leading lines don't really lead anywhere. The snow behind the trees on both sides of the road are a bit too bright for my taste. Burning this areas down would be worth considering.

[Adrian]

First one is not my taste - it might be if it was just much less of an expanse of glass and took my eye somewhere - the image needs framing in some way. Second one: I find the bush on the left much too busy and I would be cropping this a lot to give more prominence to the solitary brown trunk ahead of the interesting gap on the right.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Raymond,

I can see why you took them, but I think they could be exploited more to help concentrate the viewer's attention on the elements in the scenes that 'made' you take the shots.

The first one I would crop away the bright area on right hand side (which removes the triangular sticker) and also take some of the dark from the top, then I'd experiment with white balance, curves, local contrast sharpening to enhance the different depths of the scene. I might have tried a shooting oblique angles to the glass, giving a plane of sharp drops through the image - that might not work, or it might.

The second doesn't need the foreground bush on left hand side or the tree above it, so I would crop LHS and also rotate clockwise a tad. Then look at processing to enhance the now more dynamic composition.

Hope that's helpful,
Dave

[Wavelength]

As of now, the first image has no punch; but i was imagining a person outside.... that would have completely changed how people see it.

I really like the second image

[DanK]

I can see why you took them, but I think they could be exploited more to help concentrate the viewer's attention on the elements in the scenes that 'made' you take the shots.

I think this is really the core issue. All too often, we see something that grabs our attention and take a photo, only to find that the photo doesn't have much punch. This happens to me most of the time when I try taking photos in a forest, for example. I think the issue is that when we see it in real life, our mind finds the parts that are interesting to us and downplays the rest. Put it into a photograph, and suddenly all of it, the interesting and uninteresting, gets the same treatment, and the viewer's eye isn't necessarily drawn to something interesting. A common solution is to look for a core element, a primary subject, that will draw the viewer's eye. In the case of Manfred's comment, it could be something at the end of the road; then the leading lines would draw the viewer's eye. It might also be a person, as Nandakumar suggested. focusing on the gravestones rather than the water droplets might have worked. Hard to tell.

Sometimes, there just isn't anything in the scene that will serve this function. Other times there is, but it takes a good eye and a sense of composition to find it. I once spent a day with Carl Heilmann, who is probably the leading landscape photographer in the Adirondacks today. What struck me repeatedly is that he could find interesting points of focus when I didn't. One of the first things he always does--and he told us to do the same--is to walk the site, looking for possible interesting subjects and perspectives. I did exactly that, but I'm not very good at it yet.

[xpatUSA]

Re the first image, perhaps one could zoom in and re-caption. For example, "asteroids":

[selig1656]

Ted, your perception is interesting yet not my vision.

[Tronhard]

Well Raymond. I personally believe I relate to the first image and I like it! The background implies the winter but the focus is what one sees from the insular perspective of the car. I had a similar experience when stuck waiting in the car for some time and then thought to photograph the raindrops on the glass.

[Wavelength]

Re the first image, perhaps one could zoom in and re-caption. For example, "asteroids":

Now it is as if water droplets have changed to mercury droplets;i never thought so much sharpness is there in the original; beautiful

[xpatUSA]

Ted, your perception is interesting yet not my vision.

Thanks, Raymond, my perception was not really original. It was based on this thread et subs:

Minimalist Photography with Judy Hancock Holland

One could also have zoomed in on one water drop and flipped it vertically and got the scene the right way up and distorted but a) Not original and b) Probably not enough pixel density ...

[FootLoose]

The first image is a pretty good shot of a wintry scene. It certainly conveys that feeling to me. I think you need to focus the viewers attention a bit more though. I suggest cropping in from the right to the largest bubble on the rhs. That would also remove the annoying label on the windscreen. And cropping down from the top to about half way between the top of the trunk of the tree on the left and the upper frame. This will bring more attention to the background.

I don't think the water drops on their own are enough at the moment, unless you go for something like Ted has suggested but that would be a different photo altogether. Another option (for next time) is to have a leaf on the windscreen to provde a point of focus.

[Wandjina]

The first image is one of those you just have to take because the opportunity is there. Unfortunately there is little to hold the viewer's attention.
I agree with the others about cropping out the bush on the left in the second image, but it doesn't really worry me that much. I would also like to see a person or persons walking towards the camera from the far end of the roadway. This would create a point of interest as the eye is led into the image down the leading lines of the road and trees.

[Wavelength]

...... Another option (for next time) is to have a leaf on the windscreen to provide a point of focus.

This is a really great idea