12 Apostles

[wide2tele]

Past experience tells me you can't throw up any poor images because the members here recognize them!
Blown highlights especially are a big no no!
I think this one fits the CiC criteria better. The 12 Apostles in Victoria, Australia.

[Manfred M]

Blown highlights especially are a big no no!

I've also been known to whine about excessive crushed shadow detail...

I was also taught that a black & white image should generally cover the whole tonal range from pure black to pure white. This image appears to do that.

That being said, a nice image and a place I would love to visit and photograph if I ever manage to get to Australia.

[wide2tele]

I've also been known to whine about excessive crushed shadow detail...

Haha, noted!

That being said, a nice image and a place I would love to visit and photograph if I ever manage to get to Australia.

Thanks. Yes, it's a good country to live in. I'm hoping to find my way to the US/Canada and Europe within the next few years.

[Wavelength]

It is a wonderful image

[Donald]

I was also taught that a black & white image should generally cover the whole tonal range from pure black to pure white.

I know that Manfred and I have discussed this before.

I think the crux of the statement is "should generally". I agree. But it is equally important to know that you can break that 'rule' when the artistic objective of the image demands it. The key is that you break 'the rule' consciously for a purpose and not by accident or poor practice.

[DanK]

Very nicely composed.

If it were mine, I would increase contrast in some parts of the image, particuarly the rock faces on the right. There is a lot of interesting detail there that could do with a bit more pop.

I think the crux of the statement is "should generally". I agree. But it is equally important to know that you can break that 'rule' when the artistic objective of the image demands it. The key is that you break 'the rule' consciously for a purpose and not by accident or poor practice.

Indeed. This is a very important point that deserves a thread of its own. Perhaps we should have a rule that we don't use the word "rule". There are good reasons for learning about the "rules", but learning about them doesn't necessarily require following them. (My mother was for a bit a professional musician, and her advice to me when I was young and interested in improvisation was that I needed to learn the rules first, and only then break them.)

I've posted before that one of my favorite museums is the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. I like impressionists, and they have a remarkable collection of them. One large room in the gallery contains many of the gems of their impressionism collection. I sometimes walk around the room, trying to understand how the artists composed the images. Many of the paintings have heavy off-center elements, but very few follow the "rule of thirds". That is, they reflect the principle behind the "rule", but they don't follow it closely. At least, that's my interpretation of what I see, as someone fairly ignorant of art history.

Mark mentioned blowing highlights, but several of us had a long interchange about not long ago about the opposite end of the histogram: losing shadow detail by letting areas go to full black. One person insisted that this is always bad practice. Two of us countered that it's bad practice if it's not intended but that there is no reason to avoid full black if that's part of the photographer's artistic intent. Ted posted an example of a famous photographer, whose name I now forget, who did exactly that. I do it as well when I want pure black backgrounds for flowers. While I will never be the slightest bit famous for photography, my most successful print, which hung for several months recently in the Berkshire Museum, has a pure black background that covers a sizable portion of the print. That wasn't an accident; I had to turn the background into pure black in postprocessing.