By: Ed Lusby

Ed Lusby — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 16:36:03 +0000

Hi Artie,
I love your site and your exhibition in SD. Great images!
My comments refer to your first image above, which I really like. It is so hard to make an image that is different, and this one works very well. I really like the feather detail over the head of the bird. I’m not sure how they got there, but that’s part of the appeal of the image.
It’s also a good image to discuss the rules of photography. A couple of “rules” in play here:
1. Thou shalt always focus on a bird’s eye
2. Thou shalt never center an image
Personally, I wouldn’t worry about focusing on the eye in this image, since it’s almost invisible. I would focus on the feathers.
I find it disturbing that the Rule of Thirds so dominates photography that one doesn’t dare to take a shot like this with the bird centered. I know, I know, but there I’ve said it. I saw an exhibition some years back in the same place where your exhibit is/was. It was a head/shoulders portrait with a black background and horizontal format. The person’s image was at the far right and half the canvas was empty black. Is this what we’ve come to? I’m not saying that I would necessarily prefer the heron centered, as I like your composition too. I just think it should be a matter of personal taste, but it is not.

By: Wtlloyd

Wtlloyd — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 02:51:58 +0000

Great image. I like how the foreground whitewash helps define the shape of the …foreground. It really makes the subtle curve of the rock pop out from the background.
Re: the background whitewash – couldn’t you mask and select for the background and merely pull the whites down a taste? I agree, no matter how subtle, I rarely like it when I know someone has used something like a gaussian blur to soften the background/mimic OOF objects.

Comments on: Back in Action…

By: Ed Lusby

By: Wtlloyd