Fog

[amolitor]

I think this might be a dogwood tree. It doesn't matter, though.

 

[Light Guru]

looks more like lens flare then fog

 

[amolitor]

It is definitely not lens flare!

 

[Light Guru]

It is definitely not lens flare!

I didnt was it was lens flair I said it looks more like lens flair

 

[amolitor]

Yeah, I saw that. I just wanted to confirm that it was not. Anything to say about the picture?

 

[runnah]

It doesn't twist my nipples. Maybe because it's too nebulous?

 

[amolitor]

I wasn't really aiming to twist your nipples, but now I am consumed with the desire to make a picture that DOES.

 

[runnah]

I wasn't really aiming to twist your nipples, but now I am consumed with the desire to make a picture that DOES.

that should be the question you ask yourself before you push the button. "Will this twist some nipples?"

 

[KenC]

Interesting image. I think it might work better if the lower right corner were made darker or more indistinct somehow. This would make the flowers and leaves appear to float more than they do.

 

[amolitor]

That is a very nice observation! I had in fact burned that down a bit, but in the mucking about with scaling down for the web and saving as a JPEG and this and that, that particular burn layer got turned off!

I've gone back and made it more obvious, since I had been struggling a little already with how far to go, and I think I had erred on the "not far enough" side anyways, AND it clearly wasn't emphatic enough for to notice that it was just plain gone in the web image There IS a genuine problem in that if you push it too far it ceases to look foggy, but further experiments suggest I can go pretty far.

Anyways, we're on exactly the same page, Ken. Thanks!

 

[Derrel]

I'd agree with runnah...not really a nipple-twister of a photo. Yes, it is fog. It also looks like some water droplets have condensed on a filter or the lens' front element. I dunno....I looked at it "big", and it looks out of focus, but it's probably just all the fog. I shot some pictures recently below a huge waterfall, where the air was filled with vaporized water droplets, billions of them, and the leaves and limbs were just as soft and OOF looking as those in your shot, so...

I don't know...this looks...muddy to me. It looks like fog in the evening...it seems to be in the wrong visual key. I wish I could offer more than an "ehhhh," for this one. I WANT to like most images like this, but this one is not twisting the uh..." runnah! what was that you said,earlier?"

 

[amolitor]

Good eye, Derrel. It is, effectively, evening fog. It's mid-afternoon just below a ridgeline, with the sun off to the right behind the ridge. That's why the light is so bizarre.

It was shot through a car window at about 25mph, in thick fog, which is where the other half of the look came from. These dogwoods would come looming out of the mid quite suddenly, and then just as quickly they were gone. I make no excuses, however, this is more or less exactly the photograph I intended to make. Some choices are forced on us, some choices we can make. Regardless, we are ultimately responsible for the result.

 

[Derrel]

Well, I think that 95% of the photos that we all take are just place-fillers, and pre-ordained presses of the shutter button. We are ultimately responsible for our shots, yes, and sometimes we simply must make photos, no matter how well they might or might not turn out. Ah, yes, the CAR window is where the water droplets came from...makes perfect sense...I appreciate you telling us more about the photo, and about your thought processes. Pretty good technique for 25 MPH...no obvious motion blurring....you must have had decent shutter speed.

THis might be a good time to make a comment: I actually have a somewhat different outlook on "drive-bys" or "Car photos", whatever people want to call them. In many respects, my standards of judging them are different than they are for other types of photos. For example, in studio still life shot by artificial light: my standards for what is good and what is not are very,very strict. But, for spot news, my standards have about 10% of their weighting allocated to the technical end of things.

 

[amolitor]

This is very much a case if 'well, here I am. And there are those. Is there anything to be made if it?' and I conceived it, and I shot it. And then I processed the hell of out it, of course! There are a lot of frames that are not this good

I find myself, to my surprise, becoming something of a pictorialist more or less against my will.

Thanks, everyone, for your remarks. I post to see what other people think, and you do me honor by sharing what you think.