It was a cold winter... by michelle olson

Clint Robertson 23 Mar 2009

THIS IMAGE: This is an excellent example of waiting until (or being fortunate that) the lighting and other conditions help to capture a mood that will evoke an emotional response from viewers, as it did from me. This is an excellent image. It is worthy of a gallery display. I would buy this image. Hint: use Photoshop Color Balance to remove some of the blue in the shadow, mid-tone, and highlight and see how close to white it can get. Correcting the blue from the photograph may make it pass for a B&W photograph, even though it is a color photograph, which could be an interesting thing in and of itself. But the reality is that light IS more blue under these snowy conditions, and so it is a well-represented and accurate reflection of the world as we know it, and the mood experienced when we as viewers see such an image for ourselves in real life. ALL YOUR IMAGES: All of your images have excellent color quality. With an investment in some specialty lenses (ex.: fisheye), or some Macrophotography equipment (ex.: bellows and flash bracket), the possibilities for more dynamic close-up compositions will increase, as will the learning-curve for close-up photography, which will only be for the good. GENERAL COMMENTS: Thanks to digital photography, many would-be artistic photographers today are simply taking snapshots and calling it artisitic. They do not understand how to manipulate their camera functions to achieve desired results, and so use auto-exposure a lot, as well as taking photographs under 'normal' daylight conditions (id est, without dramatic lighting such as daybreak or sunset lighting). This seems to be a consistent trait of many photographers on this site. On the other hand, there have been far too many times when I could not wait for the 'right light' or 'golden time' and deemed it better to have the image that moved me to make a photograph rather than not have it at all, but that does not necessarily make it a photograph worthy of display to others. For myself, I can envision using such ordinary images as background layers for other compositions or for video imagery, too. For the most part But photography today offers all of us the opportunity to further manipulate reality in our efforts to make images more interesting and more emotionally evocative. But because Photography is so subjective an art form, many become defensive when critiqued; this is normal. My intent is only to suggest exploring the many possibilities with all images to see what you may discover for yourself. Try using Photoshop to recompose some images for closer examination, such as a flower, for example. The high-resolution of digital camera images allows for creation of near-macro photography from an ordinary composition with the proper resampling boxes checked in Photoshop (i.e. less loss of pixel information). There are many - whether by training or natural talent - who are far more advanced in Photography than many of us will ever hope to be, and yet we ought to study their work and emulate it if only for the purpose of educating ourselves to the point of being better than we started. Of my own photography I am most critical, and occasionally I have one or two really great photographs, but that, of course, is subjective. For the most part, I'm not sure that what I have is all that great; that is left for others to determine. In fact, I received so many rave reviews of my images on this site that I began to suspect that my either my photographs or my reviewers may not have been qualified! It was one reason I removed my gallery and have not posted anything recently. In the past I have sent close-ups of my insect photographs (which at the time I thought were excellent) off to nature magazines and the like, only to have my submissions returned with scathing critiques by their photo editors of how not-good were my submissions. Although this was disheartening, it did not deter me from continuing to better my skills. This was usually a direct result of having more and better equipment, too, but for the most part it was about better-educating myself in order to be able to satisfy the standards-of-excellence of the rest of the professional photography community.