All Along The Watertower

Dikkie · May 11, 2017

The Watertower by myself... , on Flickr

Let me know if you like it !
P.S. you can stream/download the accompanying soundtrack right here:
All Along The Watertower (part II)

jcdeboever · May 11, 2017

Interesting shot. Great color.

Gary A. · May 11, 2017

That is beautiful.

Juga · May 11, 2017

IMO, it would have been nice to not cut off the water tower unless you were specifically going for this look.

BrentC · May 11, 2017

Yeah cutting off the water tower is really bugging me. My eye is always drawn to it. Especially with having the reflection of the full tower in the water. The rest is lovely, very nice colours.

WesternGuy · May 11, 2017

I'm with Juga and BrentC - I have to wonder why you cut off the top of the water tower. Makes it look, to me at least, that the image is incomplete?

WesternGuy

Dikkie · May 12, 2017

Now that's a good mindfµck, isn't it?

It was my intention to cut it off, your eyes are then automatically drawn to the water.
I like it when photos are 90% perfect, when there is always something imperfect or some weird thing that makes you think "grrr". The photo would look too dull when you could see everything. There would have been no mystery.

On the other hand... if I cropped it larger with the whole tower included, than I couldn't get the tower at 2/3rd of the photo from the left side. I would have it centered, what I didn't want. Or I would loose something from the ground and the front of the water.
It seemed the crop that fitted the best for my eyes.

Anyway, right here you can see the whole tower:
Save the Water
But you will have to do it with a lemon around it.... you can't have it all, guys !

WesternGuy · May 12, 2017

I would disagree - the viewer's eyes are not automatically drawn to the water when you cut off the top of the tower. Most people will know how a water tower looks and thus there is really no mystery created by cutting off the top, just the question of why you did this.

In any image, the viewer's eyes almost always go to the area, or thing of highest contrast - a darker spot in a lighter image, a lighter spot in a darker image, a red flower, even if it is out of focus, in a picture of lighter coloured flowers, a single dark tree against a light blue sky, an area of dark cloud in a light sky, etc. In this case, the viewer's eyes will still go to the water tower regardless of whether or not the top is cut off and they will end up wondering why the entire tower is not included in the image, as three of the viewing photographers did. Very often, when I am photographing a taller, vertical object such as this tower, I will shoot it in a portrait mode to include the entire image. There is nothing wrong with centering an object like this as it is symmetrical and centering will help to emphasize this symmetry

The second image is the better of the two, even with the lemon around it.

WesternGuy

Dikkie · May 12, 2017

WesternGuy said:
Most people will know how a water tower looks and thus there is really no mystery created by cutting off the top, just the question of why you did this.

There there, we have it: leaving the viewer with the question.
Now there are people talking about it, why it was cut off, how the whole tower would look like (in case there was no reflection of it in the water ), ...

Imagine the tower was complete, or the image was 100% perfect, no viewer would would be left with a question. No one would talk about it.
It's an interesting idea of making an image subject for a conversation.

Dikkie · May 12, 2017

Some teacher in photography once told me there is a flow in art history, where they cut something off the subject by purpose, this way your imagination works more.

jcdeboever · May 12, 2017

I think the cutoff of the top was brilliant. You can see it in the reflection. I love it when I see people thinking outside of the box.

Gary A. · May 12, 2017

It can be called Gestalt, where your brain finishes/completes what is left out. We all know what a whole water tower looks like. Hell, Dikkie even has an example of a whole tower reflected in the water. The fact he intentionally cut off the top of the tower makes one wonder, why? There is a great deal of left/right symmetry in the image, the water tower not only breaks up the symmetry but does so while being incomplete. All that green and blue of nature, has been disrupted by an incomplete man made object. This is largely a serene scene with gently undulating bands of blue, green and brown flowing across the frame. The serenity is abruptly interrupted by the water tower. Had it been a complete tower and had it been comfortably placed in the frame ... I would had fallen back asleep. My first thoughts were to mentally center the tower for symmetry or move it to the left a bit for balance. Then I noticed the top chopped off and I really woke up wondering why ... and I can see a fuzzy copy of the complete tower top in the water ... so now I'm looking closely at the water ... I can go on, but you get the point. The slightly awkward placement of the tower and it's scalping adds significant interest and a lot of tension to an otherwise sleepy composition and subject.

Should this technique be used in every photo ... no. Does it work in this case ... yes.

Well done Dikkie, and a good call to use these techniques on this image.

jcdeboever · May 12, 2017

Gary A. said:
It can be called Gestalt, where your brain finishes/completes what is left out. We all know what a whole water tower looks like. Hell, Dikkie even has an example of a whole tower reflected in the water. The fact he intentionally cut off the top of the tower makes one wonder, why? There is a great deal of left/right symmetry in the image, the water tower not only breaks up the symmetry but does so while being incomplete. All that green and blue of nature, has been disrupted by an incomplete man made object. This is largely a serene scene with gently undulating bands of blue, green and brown flowing across the frame. The serenity is abruptly interrupted by the water tower. Had it been a complete tower and had it been comfortably placed in the frame ... I would had fallen back asleep. My first thoughts were to mentally center the tower for symmetry or move it to the left a bit for balance. Then I noticed the top chopped off and I really woke up wondering why and I can see a fuzzy copy of the tower top in the water ... so now I'm looking closely at the water ... I can go on, but you get the point. The slightly awkward placement of the tower and it's scalping adds significant interest and tension to an otherwise sleepy composition and subject.

Should this technique be used in every photo ... no. Does it work in this case ... yes.

Well done Dikkie, and a good call to use these techniques on this image.

Fantastic critique, extremely helpful.

Dikkie · May 12, 2017

Gary A. said:
Well done Dikkie, and a good call to use these techniques on this image.

Whoa... Thanks for that comment! Means a lot to me!

On another forum, someone roasted me and said the photo is so incomplete I shouldn't be allowed to put it online.

But your comment makes my day! Thanks

WesternGuy · May 13, 2017

Dikkie said:
Gary A. said:

Well done Dikkie, and a good call to use these techniques on this image.

Click to expand...

Whoa... Thanks for that comment! Means a lot to me!

On another forum, someone roasted me and said the photo is so incomplete I shouldn't be allowed to put it online.

But your comment makes my day! Thanks

Dikkie, regardless of what your image is or how it looks and what anyone may think of it, I would defend your right to post anything you want as long as it meets the standards set by the forum - yours does and, if I were you, I would simply ignore such comments (I hope you did). Anyone who makes such comments does not understand the purpose behind the existence of these public forums. He/she is entitle to their opinion, of course, even if they are wrong.

WesternGuy.