Natural Mirror

[inneist]

Hey folks,

I need your critique on this one. It's a bit difficult for me to decide myself..

No idea what should be the ideal white/black balance in B&W, but do I get it right here? What troubles me most is the sky, cloudless and bland, but somehow I feel it's ok in its own right. What do you think?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Exif Data:
2006:10:21 15:02:54
Color/bw: Black and white
Flash used: No
Focal length: 6.0mm (35mm equivalent: 36mm)
Exposure time: 0.033 s (1/30)
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO equiv.: 125

 

[SpeedTrap]

I do like the pictue!! The sky does seem a bit overexposed. If you can darken the sky a bit it might help. I did find my eyes drawn to the sky first before the detail in the image.

 

[abraxas]

I think it lost on the composition front. Very confusing, like I'm looking a four or more photos at once. Too many squares and the tree in the middle is dividing everything. Maybe lose a good part of the reflection.

 

[Dylan]

Nice shot however the first thing I was drawn to is the blurry spot on the bottom right side of the picture. I'm not sure about the sky however if you could photoshop the fence out it might be a bit cleaner.

 

[Illah]

To me this pic is too even. It's split down the middle horozontally between the subject and reflection, so it almost looks photoshopped and over-balanced. The tree down the middle adds to this, and almost splits the pic into near perfect quadtrants. Because of this nearly perfect balance it lacks 'energy' (for lack of a better term). I would try cropping to skew toward either the subject or the reflection, but not evenly split between both. If that's not enough, crop so the tree isn't centered *and* the horozontal reflection line isn't dead center either.

--Illah

 

[inneist]

Thanks for everyone's input!

I had a hard time in PS regarding the sky, the small parts among the tree branches were impossible for me. In the end, I decide to give it up and do a reshoot. The sky is more cloudy today and it turns out this way:

Improved or not?

 

[jamespetts]

As regards the sky, if you want more detail in it with a black and white photograph, there is a simple way of doing it: filter for red.

There are two ways of doing this: the old-fashioned way, and the modern way. The old-fashioned way works with both chemical film and digital, and it consists of putting a bright red filter (you can buy them at photographic shops) in front of your lens. If you have a compact camera with no filter thread, you can just hold the filter in front of the lens, ensuring that your fingers are out of shot.

The modern way consists of taking the photograph in colour to start with, and then, in Photoshop (or the GIMP, or your favoured photo editing appllication), splitting the image into RGB channels, discarding the green and blue channels, and then fully desaturating the red channel into black and white, and saving it as a greyscale image.

The effect of both of those techniques is identical: only red light will influence the final image. Because the sky is naturally blue, it will look darker, and will not appear all white; the clouds will appear white by contrast. This will not, of course, work where the sky is entirely filled with even clouds.

Using the digital version of the technique, greater subtelty can be achieved by blending the different layers of the image in different proportions in different places using layer masks. That is a rather more sophisticated technique, however, and takes somewhat more time to perfect. Either way, experimentaiton is in order.