Nubble Light

So it's been a long time since I have put anything in here for comment. Starting to get a little more used to the 4x5 now and thought I would throw this one into the shark tank for feedback...LOL This is a contact print of Nubble Lighthouse in Southern Maine that I shot last Friday.

I like it , the border makes it hard to focus, Also the horizon is not straight. It has nice foreground elements, The water looks nice, I see some dirt spots on the water. Maybe a bit too much sky? Also the sky could be burned some to get the grays to come out more. Looks good !!!

Nice composition here. The water on the rocks looks very much like snow; maybe it is? There is a nice soft movement to the sea. The horizon looks level enough to me.
A larger image of this with perhaps a little more in the sky and you could have one for the wall.

I agree with Themage about the sky particularly around the lighthouse shaft and out building (left). There is very little tonal variation between the buildings and the sky beyond, and a little bit of low opacity burning would also go a long way to giving the sky a more ominous feel. I'm assuming what he calls dirt spots are actually crab trap buoys (the 5 white dots arcing off to the right) but at this size it's hard to tell.

That said, the bottom half of the image is working fine for me :)

Nice textures and finish. It reminds me of our HDR photos. I guess you don't need to worry about that with your 4 X 5 film camera. (lol)

For what contact prints are used for it seems fine to me, however if your are looking for feedback on the photo then it needs a lot of PP to recover the photo.

The sky adds nothing to this photo, so cropping it down to half its size could work and tilt taken out of the horizon.

need more detail in the very near foreground, and loose the frame.

But these comments I would expect for a contact print because its just a contact print.

Roger R.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Yes, that is snow on the rocks. I'm still getting used to 4x5 and haven't quite figured out a method to keep every last spec of dust out of the filmholders, especially with the dry, staticy air this time of year. I have tried a little bit of dodging/burning with these contacts but, is very hard to do when working with this small of an image. I'm shopping around for some Wratten gels to give me better contrast control so the tonal difference, or lack there of, between the lighthouse and sky hopefully shouldn't be an issue soon. Themage, if you look close, the horizon is level, it's the lighthouse that's still slightly crooked. I'm still getting used to the movements and didn't get quite enough front rise in. Thanks again guys :)