Night & Dayby
gps_01Comment: Well, by some bug in the Critique Club automation page, I was given this photo to critique, even though I'm not on their list! (I shouldn't have clicked on the button out of curiosity :P). So you get to have my first ever Critique Club critique!
I think that this is a great way to express the idea of "Night and Day" in a photo, in both a literal interpretation of the title of the song, and, as you describe, in the wider sense of the emotions described in the lyrics. Cole Porter was a great artist. The song is about the savage, yearning emotions that underly love. I really like the way you chose the sunset to express this - the interface between night and day, the setting of the sun giving an idea of the cycle of time (night follows day follows night, etc.) just like the "beat beat beat of the tom toms" and the grandfather clock, etc. evoke the incessant passage of time in the song.
As a sunset photo, it's very nice. The colours are vivid, and there is a lovely, sweeping texture in the clouds. However, that little bit of horizon and the pylon are problematic to me. You say there's a city there, but I can't really see it. The horizon looks tilted, giving a feeling of disorder or chaos to the photo. That kind of undermines that idea I described of the orderly passage of time. A tilted photo works well when you want something to appear wild or crazy or strange, but this photo, to me, needs to be more subtle. The pylon is just a distraction that doesn't add anything to the composition.
If there had been more interesting scenery around, I think you could have framed some into the sunset shot without undermining it too much... a little more of the horizon, a tree, something along those lines. But what you have here is intrusive and distracting. It could easily have been cropped out, leaving a photo that may have been a bit more abstract, but would have retained all the elements that I thought supported the "night and day" theme very well.
Photographer found comment helpful.
