"All who wander are not lost" -JRR Tolken
by phaedrus

Comment by TLL061:
I've taken that same shot many times, I love to shoot on fire island , good shot

Fire Island
by phaedrus

Comment by Neil:
A nice photo with lucious colors and good reflections! The soft focus effect which may be a matter of resolution adds aesthetically, except for items one would expect to be sharer, lile the background objects. The main nit for me is the tilt to the right (nonnlevel horizon)

Fire Island
by phaedrus

Comment by Olyuzi:
Beautiful colors and tones. I do find the orange object in the foreground and erect structure on the left to be distracting. I also wish you had captured the waves in better focus. Still a worthy picture.

Fire Island
by phaedrus

Comment by bowlingranny:
Looks like a painting. very nice

Fire Island
by phaedrus

Comment by vtruan:
Great colors and the softness of the sand is quite nice.

Fire Island
by phaedrus

Comment by nborton:
i really like the pastel colors.

Fire Island
by phaedrus

Comment by kosmikkreeper:
All I can say is... WOW! I can see hwere some burning was done (in the sand) And it works well here. The perspective is also grand and majestic. Is that steam coming up from the water or cloud reflections? 9

Fire Island
by phaedrus

Comment by willem:
Great empty landscape with lovely colors and soft flowing colors between water, sand and sky. Looks like the wind is really blowing hard. You should have picked up the little orange object in front and thrown it away, but I know, you usually only see it when you get home.

"All who wander are not lost" -JRR Tolken
by phaedrus

Comment by Harz_Joerg:
Greetings from the Critique Club

Initial thoughts/My opinion
Lighthouses are always great. Colour somehow odd, too soft and the house next to the lighthouse disturbs. Title is nice, but I do not get a "guiding home" feeling.

Content/Composition
The content of your submission is of course well chosen for the title: lighthouses and "not getting lost" always work together well. However, this feeling does not come up in me: there are several things that disturb. Each thing only a little but combined they do it a lot.
First there is the colour: the image seems to be taken either in the morning or evening with the orange glowing sun in the back. This glow is reflected in the lighthouse and the houses shown in the image. That's not bad, but it does not fit to the cyan of the sky. Selective desaturation might have helped here. Actually I would suggest B&W or some duotone image.
Next the problem for me is with the houses: by seeing them the "being lost" feeling is gone. It makes the lighthouse stand in a probably friendly neighbourhood, a guiding light for the wanderer is not needed. Especially the house next to the lighthouse results in me with this feeling.
Also if there are too many features in an image the viewers eyes walk around too much. However, they should just rest on the lighthouse.
I thing a different position, where the negative space (which is important for your image) is only sky and featureless earth or ocean would have worked better.
If there is now better position to find, drastic cropping is a possible solution.

Camera work -technically
Camera-wise focus seems OK, but everything is too soft.
Exposure is very problematic here: you did use the full dynamic range from pure black to pure white/overexposed. Still, the lighthouse as focal point is too dark. +1 EV or even more would have of course made the sky brighter (that's OK) but also brighten up the houses. Again, a different point of view would have been helpful to get the lighthouse into the "right light" and the background dark.

Digital Processing - Technical
The image for sure needs some more sharpening and it could have been improved considerably by changing brightness, contrast, colour saturation etc.
Also the addition of a border and the text would have been great here as one can see from the other submission for this challenge.

Fits the challenge
Of course it does: main focal point of the image and the title work very well together, just some technical and compositional improvements should be made to make the image stand out more.

Good luck for you further submissions

PS: if there is any interest, I could put a suggestion from my side into my portfolio and we can discuss it. Just send me a PM.

Message edited by author 2004-01-09 12:30:38.

Fire Island
by phaedrus

Comment by Paclo:
What dreamy light. Love the stick.