Covered Bridge, over a river with a tree.

runnah · Jul 2, 2013

Wish I had my tripod to slow down the water. But thoughts regardless?

oldhippy · Jul 2, 2013

nice shot. Beautiful place. wonder what it would have looked like in sepia, being old timey.

amolitor · Jul 2, 2013

I think it's a very nice composition in many ways, with a great deal to like:

- The light of the sky (although I do wish there were some clouds) is reflected pleasingly in the water, creating basically three light regions, one dominant (foreground water) and to subordinate.
- There's a nice diagonal flow, nice breadth of tone.
- I like the mass of the tree's foliage in dark echoed by the mass of foliage on the right in lighter tones, all supporting that great diagonal flow.

Notice what I'm not mentioning? The bridge kind of gets lost, it's rendered in the middle of the tonal palette and structurally just separates the sky from the water. As a thing it's clearly the most interesting object in the frame, but as a graphical element it's kind of lost, to my eye. I dunno what to do about that. Sorry.

runnah · Jul 2, 2013

amolitor said:
Notice what I'm not mentioning? The bridge kind of gets lost, it's rendered in the middle of the tonal palette and structurally just separates the sky from the water. As a thing it's clearly the most interesting object in the frame, but as a graphical element it's kind of lost, to my eye. I dunno what to do about that. Sorry.

Thanks. I tried like hell to get it frame interestingly enough but just couldn't get the right angle due to a very busy road (camera right) and dense vegetation every where else. A bad excuse I know but one nonetheless.

amolitor · Jul 2, 2013

If it were my picture, which it ain't, I'd probably just try burning the bridge down like mad, or brightening it up, or even going full on dreamy and drop it into the center of a giant vignette (google "giacommelli scanno" and check the shot of the kid walking toward the camera with his hands in his pockets, if you don't know the picture already). Just to see what would happen. Maybe nuthin.

runnah · Jul 2, 2013

amolitor said:
If it were my picture, which it ain't, I'd probably just try burning the bridge down like mad, or brightening it up, or even going full on dreamy and drop it into the center of a giant vignette (google "giacommelli scanno" and check the shot of the kid walking toward the camera with his hands in his pockets, if you don't know the picture already). Just to see what would happen. Maybe nuthin.

What would the burning accomplish?

amolitor · Jul 2, 2013

Make it dark!

Darker, lighter, isolated in a vignette. Anything to pull it away from the middle-grey palette it's in right now.

Derrel · Jul 2, 2013

The bridge does not seem to show up very dominantly in the composition, but instead the foreground tree, with its heavy-handed burning in, dominates the entire frame. The little hillock of grass in the foreground is also very prominent. MY feeling is that this was shot with too short of a focal length, which as we know, makes the foreground appear physically large and prominent, and makes the background appear distant and miniscule.

For example: that tree in the foreground: I would estimate that its trunk is about 24 inches across. And on-screen, the tree is about 12 millimeters across, while the covered bridge is about 14mm in height. The tiny grassy hillock at the bottom? It is well over twice the height of the bridge's structure. This is the kind of wide-angle look that I really dislike, and which is very common.

You can burn-in and dodge multiple areas all you want, but nothing can rescue this scene from the effects of being shot with too short of a focal length. The fundamental SIZE relationships in this are so skewed, so far from reality, that the bridge and the river will always look tiny and far-away, and the tree and hillock will always be dominant elements.

runnah · Jul 2, 2013

Derrel said:
The bridge does not seem to show up very dominantly in the composition, but instead the foreground tree, with its heavy-handed burning in, dominates the entire frame. The little hillock of grass in the foreground is also very prominent. MY feeling is that this was shot with too short of a focal length, which as we know, makes the foreground appear physically large and prominent, and makes the background appear distant and miniscule.

For example: that tree in the foreground: I would estimate that its trunk is about 24 inches across. And on-screen, the tree is about 12 millimeters across, while the covered bridge is about 14mm in height. The tiny grassy hillock at the bottom? It is well over twice the height of the bridge's structure. This is the kind of wide-angle look that I really dislike, and which is very common.

You can burn-in and dodge multiple areas all you want, but nothing can rescue this scene from the effects of being shot with too short of a focal length. The fundamental SIZE relationships in this are so skewed, so far from reality, that the bridge and the river will always look tiny and far-away, and the tree and hillock will always be dominant elements.

First off, my burning is not heavy handed, rather the hands of a master.

Second you are correct about the focal length. I was shooting at 10mm to get everything into frame. I regret that there wasn't a position to get everything into frame at around 50mm.

amolitor · Jul 2, 2013

I think Derrel has a point with the size relationships.

That said, the bridge can stand a tremendous amount of either burning or dodging without turning into a weird object. I have in front of me an experiment where I simply buried all that foreground material in shadow, pushed it all down 1-2 Zones along with the dark area of the river and the darker areas of the sky, and then lifted the bridge, the bright areas of the river, and the bright areas of the sky up by about a Zone or a bit more.

It turns it into a sort of "bridge seen through a tunnel" effect, and definitely looks surreal, but not as outré as many HDRs we see these days.

And, I think, it's modestly successful. The bridge now dominates, visually, to my eye. Of course, it *would*, to my eye, because I just did this stuff. So, who knows.

runnah · Jul 2, 2013

amolitor said:
I think Derrel has a point with the size relationships.

That said, the bridge can stand a tremendous amount of either burning or dodging without turning into a weird object. I have in front of me an experiment where I simply buried all that foreground material in shadow, pushed it all down 1-2 Zones along with the dark area of the river and the darker areas of the sky, and then lifted the bridge, the bright areas of the river, and the bright areas of the sky up by about a Zone or a bit more.

It turns it into a sort of "bridge seen through a tunnel" effect, and definitely looks surreal, but not as outré as many HDRs we see these days.

And, I think, it's modestly successful. The bridge now dominates, visually, to my eye. Of course, it *would*, to my eye, because I just did this stuff. So, who knows.

Post away because I can't visualize what you are talking about.

amolitor · Jul 2, 2013

Derrel · Jul 2, 2013

runnah said:
SNIP>>>>
Second you are correct about the focal length. I was shooting at 10mm to get everything into frame. I regret that there wasn't a position to get everything into frame at around 50mm.

This kind of picture has what is often called "steep perspective", which is characterized by LARGE foreground elements, and tiny background elements. You shot at 10mm in order to get everything in to the frame by necessity, in a single frame, a one-shot capture.

That's a compromise. That's the real world intruding into the act of photographing. It killed the picture.

A multi-shot stitch would have allowed you to render the scene so that the bridge and river were large enough to "see" better, so they'd have some impact.

No offense is intended, but this is what I see coming out of the Canon 10-22mm zoom these days, all over the place. Landscapes that have this same lack of impact on the subject, because the focal length so easily renders this "steep perspective". I mean, the 10-22 is great for making tiny apartment living rooms look larger, but in landscape situations, it leads to this far-away and small look.

runnah · Jul 2, 2013

Oh I see, I like this.

runnah · Jul 2, 2013

Derrel said:
runnah said:

SNIP>>>>
Second you are correct about the focal length. I was shooting at 10mm to get everything into frame. I regret that there wasn't a position to get everything into frame at around 50mm.

Click to expand...

This kind of picture has what is often called "steep perspective", which is characterized by LARGE foreground elements, and tiny background elements. You shot at 10mm in order to get everything in to the frame by necessity, in a single frame, a one-shot capture.

That's a compromise. That's the real world intruding into the act of photographing. It killed the picture.

A multi-shot stitch would have allowed you to render the scene so that the bridge and river were large enough to "see" better, so they'd have some impact.

No offense is intended, but this is what I see coming out of the Canon 10-22mm zoom these days, all over the place. Landscapes that have this same lack of impact on the subject, because the focal length so easily renders this "steep perspective". I mean, the 10-22 is great for making tiny apartment living rooms look larger, but in landscape situations, it leads to this far-away and small look.