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DPChallenge Forums >> Challenge Results >> Feedback on Monument entry please ...
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05/04/2015 07:42:33 AM · #1
Have to say I'm surprised and at a loss as to why this did so poorly. I did receive one comment (Thanks Nancie), and it was favorable.



Any thoughts please? Thanks in advance.
05/04/2015 08:20:19 AM · #2
Left a comment:

Since I'm not a paying member, I couldn't vote on this image. But if I did I would have given it a 5, as it clearly meets the challenge. There are two things that bother me about this image.

1. The light doesn't look balanced. The background has a bunch of detail but the face of the soldier has very little. Since the soldier and background are basically facing the same direction, my eye expects about the same amount of detail. As is, the background looks over processed.

2. The crop is a little tight for my taste. A bit more space on the bottom and sides would have given the monument more breathing room and better convey the size of the battle field.

As is, it is a monument shot with the background being dominate.

Tim

Message edited by author 2015-05-04 08:20:30.
05/04/2015 09:03:55 AM · #3
Comment added.
05/04/2015 09:45:56 AM · #4
Ask and you shall receive. :-)

Ok, I got it. It's all screwed up. LOL. Thanks everyone for the time spent commenting on this - I do appreciate it.
05/04/2015 10:39:48 AM · #5
It's not bad as a Gettsburg narrative, but as a stand-alone image it's a tad dry.
05/04/2015 10:48:17 AM · #6
Again - Thanks! One of the things I took away from the visit to this location was the overwhelming sense of size and scope. I intentionally included the background as part of the context of the monument and the place it resided in (the story I guess you could say). I can see where that missed the mark with the viewers / voters.

Part of what was working against me was the lighting in general. It was very overcast and I tried to bring some pop and detail in post ...

It's funny, I had a couple of shots I had grabbed here locally, but was so focused on using something from this trip to Gettysburg I had blinders on. :-D

05/04/2015 01:54:09 PM · #7
I like to compare and contrast my images with the ones that did really well in the challenge. Since the winner was also a statue, it might give you some idea of what "sells" well with the voters when taking an image of a static object like a statue. The winning entry has lots of detail w/in the statue and an interesting but not distracting background.
05/04/2015 04:52:23 PM · #8
As a rule, bracketing exposures on overcast days for an HDR result is doomed to failure. You end up with a FLATTER image that looks very unnatural. I expect if you took the middle exposure of this batch and worked straight from that, you could produce a much stronger result. Make that image available if you like and I'd take a stab at it.

Regarding your well-expressed sense of wanting to include the *place* as well as the *monument*, i get the feeling you could do that with a slightly wider lens and changing the angle slightly, so the soldier loomed a bit in the right foreground and then the landscape ran off some to the left. But then, for all I know, right over there to the left is a park headquarters building or a troop of boy scouts or something :-)

05/04/2015 06:41:31 PM · #9
Originally posted by Catherine_B:

I like to compare and contrast my images with the ones that did really well in the challenge. Since the winner was also a statue, it might give you some idea of what "sells" well with the voters when taking an image of a static object like a statue. The winning entry has lots of detail w/in the statue and an interesting but not distracting background.

:-) Yes, Thank you. The winning image looks similar in nature to what I entered the last go-around for this challenge. I wanted a bigger story here this time. But I do understand what you're saying 110%.
05/04/2015 06:45:56 PM · #10
Originally posted by Bear_Music:

As a rule, bracketing exposures on overcast days for an HDR result is doomed to failure. You end up with a FLATTER image that looks very unnatural. I expect if you took the middle exposure of this batch and worked straight from that, you could produce a much stronger result. Make that image available if you like and I'd take a stab at it.

Regarding your well-expressed sense of wanting to include the *place* as well as the *monument*, i get the feeling you could do that with a slightly wider lens and changing the angle slightly, so the soldier loomed a bit in the right foreground and then the landscape ran off some to the left. But then, for all I know, right over there to the left is a park headquarters building or a troop of boy scouts or something :-)

Thanks Robert. I may pull that middle copy and post it as you suggest. As for the positioning I had a couple of choices; I took this shot from an elevated rock across the road from the statue which allowed me to bring the tree line down and capture more of the hillside. The other option (which I may have some outtakes of) was from in front and to the side of the statue, but I didn't like the statue jutting over the distant tree line as it was (if I remember correctly). Left and right of what I've composed starting getting more cluttered with objects and brush, etc...

... and yes, there were some Boy Scouts among us. We had about 30 Scouts show up for this trip. :-D
05/04/2015 08:45:01 PM · #11
Originally posted by glad2badad:

... I intentionally included the background as part of the context of the monument and the place it resided ...

FWIW I think my entry suffered from the same "problem" -- it was maybe as much about the context as the monument itself.

When you have flat lighting on a broad landscape using a high-radius UnSharp mask filter effect** can sometimes add some "pop" and improve the apparent contrast.

**I think similar to the "clarify" filter in some other program than Photoshop
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