Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The body of a whale
This photograph was taken last year on the Bay of Fundy. Its a humpback whale. It is a simple image but to me there is real sense of power. A very graceful animal but its immense size and solid body creates a sense of awe...for me anyway. The original photo was in colour but there was little of that so I converted it to black and white. Damian
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5 comments:
D
The crop makes it impossible to know the scale of the beast - I guess you had to be there, so we'll take your word for it. For me, photographically, the top half of the photo is all sea, and adds little to my eye. Crop it out. Final comment, it's too grey - as a mono, it lacks punch, but looks a bit all the same - the whale merges into the nearly-identical sea, thereby losing impact.
I can see the attraction in the subject matter, but it's lost in this particular photo, for me.
Ivan
PS now at least we know why there's less posting on this blog...
OK. Thanks for the comments. Firstly, I kind of like the open water above because the whale is in motion; its not just about the whale its also about the dynamics between the whale and the sea.
Secondly, when I look at the histogram the range of greys is very restricted, so I cannot stretch the tails out to their limit. Perhaps its a case of playing the levels, curves and the BW channels to get a better fit.
Thirdly, I have been rather lazy on the blog, but even though I have much more going on, I intend to post as often as I can. This blog delivers something different to what I have elsewhere (harsh criticism) so its important to me to keep it going.
Damian
I agree with Ivan... too grey. How does the original look if you push up the saturation?
I'm not so convinced that you need to extend the tonal range of this image. Not everything needs to be dark black to bright white. It's quite high-key but I'd be tempted to brighten it overall - there's very little white in there.
Also, i take the point about the original being almost-mono, but sometimes some of those almost monos benefit from remaining in colour to give the very subtlest, almost imperceptable hints and cues. I'd like to see this back with the original saturation.
As for the image itself, I find it very pleasing. Composition - an abstract series of triangles - is nice - and you're left looking at it for several seconds before you work out what it is! This is often NOT a good thing but in this case, it is. It's a shame that there's nothing in the image to give a sense of scale - how perfect would it have been to see a gull perched on the fin! Nevertheless, I think it's an image worth working on.
Those are interesting points. I was there so I know the scale and obviously assumed that others do too.
The tonal range is interesting too. I will post the original. So, when an image has a very narrow tonal range I guess one stretches it as much as is required and concern yourself less with achieving the absolute white and black tones.
D
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