Photo Critique: "Planting", Feb 1, 2023

[Alan Klein]

OK I'll be the guinea pig to get this thing started. Critique as you wish.

Planting by Alan Klein, on Flickr

Chamonix 45H-1, 150mm, Tmax 400, 4x5", Orange Filter, Epson V850 Scanner, edited in Lightroom

[Ulophot]

Hi, Alan. For me this is a strong composition with a story well-told in the relationships and contrasts among the house and fence, pine tree and clouds, and furrowed field. It asks questions in a good way. Good timing.

The edge and corner darkening, It appears that the edge and corner darkening are your decision, not a product of light falloff, I can understand them as a way of emphasizing the singular status of the house and tree, but I think that darkening on the outside fence pickets is overdone, because it emphasizes the darkening rather than the relationship to the plowed rows and worn wood of the house.

There appears to be a softening of focus on the left, primarily in the middle section where the trees are. I can't tell if it is in the negative, perhaps due to a film buckle or that those trees were beyond your depth of field. However, if it is fixable, sharpness there would be more in unity with the rest of the image.

[Alan Klein]

Thanks for your comments Phil. Anyone else?

[h2oman]

I agree with Philip about the edge darkening. Images without a strong focal point might benefit, but I find that the house and the tree are very powerful draws and don't need that help. In addition, the slats in the fence take us to the furrows in the field, which take us to the house and tree. The centering of the house and tree, the perfectly perpendicular view of the fence and the side of the house create a very stable, formal composition. Some prefer images that are more dynamic, but I, for one, enjoy photographs of this sort.

There's a lot going on in the image, and I wonder if the clouds are just one too many elements? Do they create a slight imbalance? I don't know, just food for thought. Due to some recent interactions with a photographer friend, I've been thinking about landscape skies a lot lately...

It does appear that the furrows and background trees are much sharper on the right than the left.

I previously said critiques should not include "I would...," but I'm going to break my own rule : If I lived near this place, I would photograph it often, under various conditions!

[Vaughn]

Over-all a very good image. If one can tell there has been manipulation (such as edge-burning), often that is a sign one has gone too far.

It is interesting you have treated the house/tree as a single visual unit, centering them as a whole in the image. Someone with more personal attachment to the property might have centered the house. It would be one of those things I would be going back and forth on behind the camera when deciding the final composition. The visual play between the fence and the furrows is fun. The fence does not become the barrier it might otherwise be.

I am enjoying the tonality of the sky just above the house. The darkening of your sky does force the eye towards subject (tree/house) in the center. An even sky (not noticably darken and perhaps no filter, or a yellow filter) would allow the tree and house to be what draws the eye in. Basically the same thing, but subtle.

[cowanw]

A brilliant pictorialist riposte to Paul Strand’s “White Fence”. Both images act as a living symbol of rural America, and also of the symbols of ownership and property delimitation. Strand's image shows a bold white foreground laid down over a dark ground, while yours melds the tonal range of the fence into that of the fields and the house. Strand, drawing on the ideals of modern art, uses the properties of the fence to create a dynamic composition that does not employ traditional perspective. Your image returns to the static and central composition with pictorialist tones and a clever use of soft focus.
It is unclear what the principle subject of your image is as the tonalities of house, field and fence make a choice imprecise. The furrows of the fields and the slats of the fence lead us not directly to the house but to the space between house and tree, which creates a sense of disquiet or uncertainty.
The house, the structure of American desire, is dilapidated, with dark soulless windows and a closed unwelcoming door. The fields plowed and planted in long lines across the full width of the picture speak of industrial farming; the dilapidated house has been sold with the land to the corporation and is empty and left to ruin.
The fence is not the bright new dynamic fence of Strand’s modern world. It is a snow fence put up to stop the cold winds and snows of winter, but it has not been taken down in the spring. There are no longer people to maintain it and it is broken uneven and tonally merged into the fields. Strand's fence is a fence that is desirable, even enviable. This fence represents a barrier to access, to keep out the experience and wisdom and change that come with the winter wind.
From the shadows cast and the mostly bright sky, it seems to be morning, but from the East, the sky, which tends brighter to the left, is inexplicitly darkened in the corner just as much as is the right but the effect is heightened. (there is a stop or so tonal difference in the natural right and left skies; consider maintaining this difference if you do darken the corners) At the same time all of the left is out of focus, fuzzy, undefined and the trees lining the horizon of the field are knurled and deformed. There is darkness and fuzziness and softness from the left. On the other hand, the right is sharp, crisp, well defined. Veracity and sharpness are on the right, while ignoring the decay of the house and fence.
The tall conifer towers over all else. Is this nature that will still be there after the complexities of man have crumbled?
This might be a brilliant pictorial comment on the decaying of America and its turn to the right despite the failure of ownership and property delimitation! Or it might be that the image is an expression of your idea of a perfectly natural pretty picture- abandoned house, industrial farming and dilapidated fence.
I reread parts of my criticism books but they all require a statement of intent to critique whether a photograph is successful or not.
We do not know what your purpose was regarding this image, so we cannot comment on the success of the picture.
I have an expectation that what I have written will be disposed of quickly. Nevertheless, reflect that, even if you just thought it was a pretty picture, something in your mind made you decide this was an image that you wanted to make. You have decided to depict the tonally indistinct fence, field, and house in a static central composition.
Something made you think this image was worthy to make? I cannot know what that was but this is what it made me think about.
I tried to enlarge the image and this took me to Flickr where a lot of people liked this, so good on that.

[awty]

It works better in portrait or square, but apart from that it's a very nice composition.

[Vaughn]

I was thinking along the lines of a square, also...but thinking along other lines...if a feeling of openness is desired, stepping back several paces with same lens and the same amount of fence would open up the sky. But the original image strongly draws the viewer into a place that looks to be full of stories.

[awty]

I was thinking along the lines of a square, also...but thinking along other lines...if a feeling of openness is desired, stepping back several paces with same lens and the same amount of fence would open up the sky. But the original image strongly draws the viewer into a place that looks to be full of stories.

Sure, but the picture at hand is so very well balanced in square format youd have to do it just because. Although Id make the house more centered, but thats just me.

[Tin Can]

Agree

You are one of the experts that qualify by extensive study and writing to make a critique

Thank you

A brilliant pictorialist riposte to Paul Strand’s “White Fence”. Both images act as a living symbol of rural America, and also of the symbols of ownership and property delimitation. Strand's image shows a bold white foreground laid down over a dark ground, while yours melds the tonal range of the fence into that of the fields and the house. Strand, drawing on the ideals of modern art, uses the properties of the fence to create a dynamic composition that does not employ traditional perspective. Your image returns to the static and central composition with pictorialist tones and a clever use of soft focus.
It is unclear what the principle subject of your image is as the tonalities of house, field and fence make a choice imprecise. The furrows of the fields and the slats of the fence lead us not directly to the house but to the space between house and tree, which creates a sense of disquiet or uncertainty.
The house, the structure of American desire, is dilapidated, with dark soulless windows and a closed unwelcoming door. The fields plowed and planted in long lines across the full width of the picture speak of industrial farming; the dilapidated house has been sold with the land to the corporation and is empty and left to ruin.
The fence is not the bright new dynamic fence of Strand’s modern world. It is a snow fence put up to stop the cold winds and snows of winter, but it has not been taken down in the spring. There are no longer people to maintain it and it is broken uneven and tonally merged into the fields. Strand's fence is a fence that is desirable, even enviable. This fence represents a barrier to access, to keep out the experience and wisdom and change that come with the winter wind.
From the shadows cast and the mostly bright sky, it seems to be morning, but from the East, the sky, which tends brighter to the left, is inexplicitly darkened in the corner just as much as is the right but the effect is heightened. (there is a stop or so tonal difference in the natural right and left skies; consider maintaining this difference if you do darken the corners) At the same time all of the left is out of focus, fuzzy, undefined and the trees lining the horizon of the field are knurled and deformed. There is darkness and fuzziness and softness from the left. On the other hand, the right is sharp, crisp, well defined. Veracity and sharpness are on the right, while ignoring the decay of the house and fence.
The tall conifer towers over all else. Is this nature that will still be there after the complexities of man have crumbled?
This might be a brilliant pictorial comment on the decaying of America and its turn to the right despite the failure of ownership and property delimitation! Or it might be that the image is an expression of your idea of a perfectly natural pretty picture- abandoned house, industrial farming and dilapidated fence.
I reread parts of my criticism books but they all require a statement of intent to critique whether a photograph is successful or not.
We do not know what your purpose was regarding this image, so we cannot comment on the success of the picture.
I have an expectation that what I have written will be disposed of quickly. Nevertheless, reflect that, even if you just thought it was a pretty picture, something in your mind made you decide this was an image that you wanted to make. You have decided to depict the tonally indistinct fence, field, and house in a static central composition.
Something made you think this image was worthy to make? I cannot know what that was but this is what it made me think about.
I tried to enlarge the image and this took me to Flickr where a lot of people liked this, so good on that.