Placid
by
lovethelightComment by dr rick: Greetings from the Critique Club
Great shot! Well deserving of a ribbon. I love the way the shape of the hills is reflected in the water, then echoed once again in your arms. It makes a nice rhythm that combines with the warm colors of the sunset to create a photo with a nice peaceful feeling.
The cloudy sky is anything but placid! And bright cool colors normally attract attention away from dark warm ones. But for some reason that doesn't happen here; I don't find my gaze distracted by the sky. Interesting. I speculate that two factors combine to make this work: First, the clouds take almost exactly half of the photo, splitting the photo in two. This should normally be avoided, but breaking that "rule" of composition is very effective here. The bottom half is the more interesting, so the eye just ignores the top half. Second, your outfit is bright and cool, in constrast to the rest of the bottom half of the photo. This pulls attention right to you, which is where it should be.
I downloaded the photo and tried a couple of alternative crops just to see what would happen. First, I cropped enough off the top to put you on a "thirds" intersection. That doesn't work well at all; the clouds that remain at the top then grab attention and really ruins the balance. Then I tried cropping off all of the clouds and part of the bottom to balance it out and, again, put you on a thirds intersection. That gives it a horizontal format and makes for a very pleasant and placid image. Too placid! Almost boring.
So I really appreciate the composition you chose here. The bright, dynamic sky provides an exciting contrast to the tranquility of the bottom half, enhancing the overall feeling. The photo gives a message of placid in the face of chaos. Very nice! And though I appreciated this message at first glance (as did most voters), it took some analysis to understand just why this works so well.
Great work technically. The sky is slightly overexposed, but it isn't serious and I don't know if it could even have been avoided. Perfect focus and a good job of postprocessing. The trouble you had getting your camera to the right height really paid off. Wonderful pose. And you got the sun just right. Again, a wonderful photo!
Photographer found comment helpful.
