Foggy Morning II: Arlington Cemetary

[CLKunst]

Critiques and comments welcomed suggestions cheerfully explored. . .

[Ridgetop]

I like it except for the blown out area in the upper right. It's bright enough that it pulls you away from the main part of the picture. . .the cemetary itself. The rest of the picture has some great composition and I like the line up of the stones. Pretty cool. Maybe just a little more contrast? Not sure.

[CLKunst]

Thank you for the critique Ridgetop. I agree with you about the highlight in the sky and will see what I can do to dodge that in evenly or lower the brightness in that area some. I wonder if it would have been quite so noticeable if I hadn't added the "mat". I played with the contrast some but wanted to keep it as I saw it that morning which was quite muted from the fog. The bright patch in the corner is the sun burning through, 10 minutes later the field was mostly clear.
Regards,

[Ronnoco]

Doesn't work in black and white. Too bland and lacking a dominant centre of interest. The tonal range is also too limited for black and white as well. You need to get much closer to some of the gravestones and use depth of field and a wide angle lens to get the gravestones in the background as well.

Ronnoco

[bluesguy]

For what it's worth, here is my 2 cents:
I like the subject and the composition but there is not enough contrast to make the scene to really "pop". I like B&W photos but I did not have a lot of success with them. Blacks were not really black, whites were not really white. Seems like they were more grey all over. I am referencing film and commercial processing. Personally, I don't think that all pics need a dominant feature to retain it's interest.

bluesguy

[Greg McCary]

CL, The sky is somewhat blown out but, I like your choice of B&W on this. I think it works well with a cemetery. I think the overall feel of the picture, misty, is great. As a whole I really like the image. All of those headstones gathering in numbers as ones eyes moves back into the picture. Very powerfull.
Greg

[readingr]

CL,

This doesn't work for me as a landscape and think it would be better as a portrait. The part to the left distracts from the lines the gravestones makeangling into the vertical rows and then into the background. Cropping from the third tree from the right would make it better.

I think it also needs a contrast boost to make it pop in B&W as it looks flat.

The other poblem in B&W is that the sky will always dominate as its so bright. In colour you might be able to get some gray in it but it may still be to bright.

Roger

[CLKunst]

I'll address specific comments one I get the heat going in my office. In the meantime,
here is an alternate image which addresses some of what was mentioned being lacking in the first. Try this on for size. [Yes, I know I have branches and lens spots to clone out. Thanks in advance.]

[MB1]

For me the second image is better than the first-I think because you are closer to the headstones and there is a greater range of contrast. I think I would like the first one more if there was actually less contrast to show that is was indeed a foggy morning (as I recall there were some pretty thick fog banks out there). For both of the images I would crop the sky until the top of the trees was at the top of the image and there was very little sky.

BTW did you see the wreaths? It seems to me that if you are going to photograph the cemetery this time of year it would be worth the effort to get some shots of the wreaths. Alas, I am too busy at work to get over there......

[GB1]

CL - It's OK, but lacks a punchline. Sort of just a normal photo of a cemetary. The second posting is a bit better wrt composition but is a little to symmetric for me. I would have backed up a little and got more in here, a "big picture" instead, since there's nothing in particular that requires such a tight crop (one's strict attention).

Oh well!
GB