Red skies at night, a sailor's delight.... Red skies in morning, sailor take warning... At least when crossing the Atlantic from Europe to the Americas..
Good example of how to crop when the sky is the star of the show, but within the sky the star is (quite literally) the sun. That's where attention gets pulled by contrast wherever my eye enters (top/bottom/left/right) which makes the composition feel more static than when placed off center. The vertical rather than horizontal crop also makes it feel static and "cramped".
That said I've also taken sun shots (usually sunsets on Panama City Beach, FL) with vertical crops where the sun wound up in the center, but it was dictated framing the interesting foreground content. Yours is a nice dramatic sky shot, but when you can also get more interesting action with people in the foreground it makes, I think, for a more interesting photo and story imagined from the POV of the people seen in the shot. Here are some examples of mine of what I'm suggesting....
http://super.nova.org/TP/PCB_Sunset.jpg
There the vertical crop was dictated by the angle of the beach and the position of the sun on it's reflection working a leading line at an equal opposite angle creating an X pattern right where the person bending over is looking...
I'll only use portrait mode for a landscape/skyscape if the foreground action dictates the need. Was there something you had to crop out of your shoot than made you opt for vertical?
I tire of relentless landscape orientation for landscape/sky scenes. The foreground was rather cluttered. Consequently, to gain maximum sky, a portrait orientation was a reasonable option. I have landscape versions that have their own more conventional charm. I posted the portrait orientation precisely because it doesn't conform to the conventional landscape paradigm.
Very nice, Karen. And a sky I wish I was there to fully appreciate.
I can understand your choice to go vertical.
My crit would be to see if you can sharpen the edges of the silhouetted trees. Maybe you prefer the softness. I might also consider darkening the rooftop lower right unless you are going for a more documentary image.
Scot
AuntiPode wrote:
I tire of relentless landscape orientation for landscape/sky scenes.
I once complained to God about exactly the same thing. The next thing I remember is waking up lying prone on the beach, ear in the sand, looking at the horizon at a right angle. I've never again questioned the wisdom of the design of either the world or way my eyes are arranged horizontally vs vertically on my head or tired of looking at sunsets in landscape mode.
AuntiPode wrote:
I tire of relentless landscape orientation for landscape/sky scenes. The foreground was rather cluttered. Consequently, to gain maximum sky, a portrait orientation was a reasonable option. I have landscape versions that have their own more conventional charm. I posted the portrait orientation precisely because it doesn't conform to the conventional landscape paradigm.
Lovely photo Karen.
No explanations necessary. It's your vision. Even a cursory run through of images made by famous landscape/nature photographers turns up numerous landscape/sky scenes in vertical orientation. I don't regard turning my camera 90 degrees as questioning God's wisdom.
I do have one question. Have you considered touching out the two street lamps on the left? Do you think they add to or take away from the photo? I think the one where you see the post works fine, there is another light that I'm not sure of.
I go back and forth about the street lights, but I usually feel they add some sense of place and a little eye wandering isn't a bad thing if the image isn't otherwise cluttered. The point-like sources are street lights. The general foreground illumination is morning's version of gloaming.
I've looked at the edit and I've looked at the original on a better monitor. The post for the second light reads now.
I like it better with the lampposts. The only thing I might suggest is to add a highlight along the right edge of each, in one of the colors of the sky, to add just a smidge of separation from the background.
