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Archive 2012 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?
  
 
PerlaD300
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p.1 #1 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


Hello,

Is the composition working at all? What could have done better? Ground was lightly covered in snow and the trees were bald, so went B&W. I am learning to make good B&W pictures so wanted your honest C&C to make myself better.

The reason for no room on the right side is that there is busy road with lot of cars, so had to crop them out to keep the focus into the frame...

Appreciate all your input...

If you are wondering what the guy was doing...he is testing his Tokin 11-16mm wide angle lens

This image is copyrighted by the owner


Thanks for the feedback..
Cheers
Perla


Feb 21, 2012 at 08:40 PM
sbeme
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p.1 #2 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


Its a pretty scene. On my work monitor it appears you have done an excellent job with exposure and preserving details in the whites. I agree: looks like it was a good choice for BW conversion.
As to your questions about composition:
First, appears rotated clockwise. But I dont know the terrain.
Two, the strong long line of the fence brings the eye across and deep into the scene but there is nothing down there. The tree on the left is an interesting element, but might be better off less "truncated" if you will, with more room at the top working better.
As shot, it seems to me the implied story is the photographer shooting the scene. In that case, the long line is fine, but I think the image would be stronger with the camera showing, and pointing, along with his head/face, down the length of the scene.
Scott


Feb 21, 2012 at 08:45 PM
Skarkowtsky
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p.1 #3 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


I get stuck looking at the subject, and have to fight to move around the scene. The leading line is good, however, though it's working in the reverse.

Consider this:

In our culture, we read left to right. Having done this for the better part of our lives (regardless of our age), we have subconsciously accepted that the progression from left to right represents forward progression, growth, expanse and so on.

Most imagery in Western culture follows this form, and viewers never consider that it's a conscious manipulation from the creator. Think of most of the successful logos you've seen, they all seem to optically travel left to right.

If you were to watch a Kurosawa film (Japan), you'd find that most of his compositions treat hierarchy from the top of the frame, down to the bottom, with the more prominent subject matter toward the top. In Japanese culture, traditional paintings and written documents are read from top to bottom, not left to right.

Long story short, your leading line is great in theory, though to my eyes, it pulls me right out of the frame by the time I get around to it. Your subject is on the left, but there's not much left to get me around the scene, and there's not much happening in the background along the left edge of the frame.

Understand where I'm coming from?


Feb 21, 2012 at 09:09 PM
Bob Jarman
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p.1 #4 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


Nice image.

I agree with Scott about the processing holding detail in the snow.

To contend with the leading/fence line, I cropped the RHS in hopes the tree might anchor that line, serving as roadblock to exiting the image.

Also rotated slightly to bring restore fence post verticals, and played with the lights and mid-tones, darkening them slightly.

As @Skarkowtsky points out, subject at left can present unintended difficulties by virtue of how we typically view things.

Regards,

Bob









Feb 21, 2012 at 11:57 PM
AuntiPode
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p.1 #5 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


For whatever reason, my vision seems to have no handedness bias. I understand the reasoning of the assertion, but I'm not certain I agree with it. It seems, at least for me, reading and image appreciation are independent processes.


Feb 22, 2012 at 12:35 AM
Skarkowtsky
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p.1 #6 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


Appreciation and the psychology behind successful composition are two different things. Western brains are hard wired to find harmony and balance with points of interst leading to or situated toward the right side of a given composition, from literal objects to visual paths to weighted elements and the activation of negative space.

Look at the great paintings if the past 500 years, for an example. The works of the great cinematographers, too.
Feb 22, 2012 at 01:53 AM
Bob Jarman
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p.1 #7 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


Skarkowtsky wrote:
Appreciation and the psychology behind successful composition are two different things. Western brains are hard wired to find harmony and balance with points of interst leading to or situated toward the right side of a given composition, from literal objects to visual paths to weighted elements and the activation of negative space.

Look at the great paintings if the past 500 years, for an example. The works of the great cinematographers, too.


I'll pick a nit with "hardwired"...rather I think, strictly my opinion, we are products of our culture, experiences, and environment.

Bob


Feb 22, 2012 at 01:59 AM
Bob Jarman
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p.1 #8 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


AuntiPode wrote:
For whatever reason, my vision seems to have no handedness bias. I understand the reasoning of the assertion, but I'm not certain I agree with it. It seems, at least for me, reading and image appreciation are independent processes.

Curiosity - are you left-handed or ambidexterous?

Bob


Feb 22, 2012 at 02:01 AM
sbeme
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p.1 #9 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


the old nature vs nurture
sliding scale of relative influences depending on individual, culture, learning, environment, attribute


Feb 22, 2012 at 02:03 AM
Skarkowtsky
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p.1 #10 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


I'm lefty, dominant left eye, ambidextrous when playing musical instruments.


Feb 22, 2012 at 02:09 AM
 



AuntiPode
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p.1 #11 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


Had a devil of a time as a child learning to distinguish left from right. Dexterity was ambidextrous as a child, but trained by parents to be right-handed. For close objects my left eye is dominant. For distant objects, my right eye is dominant.

The topic begs the question, what about native Arabic and Hebrew writers? So they are hard wired to write contrary to their hard-wiring? Seems unlikely. I still find the assertion or preferential composition handedness hard to believe.


Feb 22, 2012 at 02:56 AM
Skarkowtsky
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p.1 #12 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


And I quote myself:

Skarkowtsky wrote:
Most imagery in Western culture follows this form


I never said the world. I never said all.


Feb 22, 2012 at 03:20 AM
AuntiPode
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p.1 #13 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


My point was the difference in cultural norm suggests, if there is a handedness effect, it's a habit effect, not hard-wired preference.


Feb 22, 2012 at 03:35 AM
Skarkowtsky
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p.1 #14 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


And I'm suggesting that habits are formed by many things, including repetition that could be brought on by external influence.

I can mail you literature to substantiate my point if view, if you'd like.


Feb 22, 2012 at 03:43 AM
AuntiPode
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p.1 #15 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


I'm addressing the difference between habit and hard-wiring - nurture versus nature. Habit is experience - learning - nurture. Hard-wiring is organic - structural/chemical/nerve structure. If humans had an organic preference for reading from left to right, why would there be languages written from right to left? I suggest text direction is arbitrary and simply a matter of convention, possibly influenced by mundane considerations as keeping the writing hand out of the wet clay or ink. Consider, other logical comparisons such as which side of the road to drive? In the West, the right side of the road convention and the right side of the road co-exist.

In addition to the habit versus hard-wired issue, I'm skeptical about the proposition the text reading habit is a strong influence on image perception. If anything, I'd anticipate novelty seeking might shift perception in the other direction.

Edited on Feb 22, 2012 at 04:31 AM · View previous versions
Feb 22, 2012 at 04:01 AM
Skarkowtsky
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p.1 #16 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


And I'm saying that in this instance, being hard wired to subconsciously perceive a certain way IS influenced, in part, by culture, and all that that entails.

In this case, our Western culture plays a part in some of the comprehension habits we form.


Feb 22, 2012 at 04:13 AM
AuntiPode
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p.1 #17 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


I'd chalk this up to quibbling about the meaning of "hard-wired", but there is more to it. What is created by experience, is by definition, not hard-wired. It's learned. Handedness and eye dominance are "hard-wired", education doesn't change them. I learned to do most things with my right hand - now nominally right-handed. However, my eye dominance testifies the wiring didn't change. Experience just built work-arounds and habits. People learn to write in one direction and can then learn to write in the other. Did learning to write a second language re-wire their brains? Two sets of wires?

From what I recall about brain activity, images are processed differently from written words. If the brain processes images and written word differently, how much does reading habit influence image perception?


Feb 22, 2012 at 04:33 AM
Bob Jarman
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p.1 #18 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


AuntiPode wrote:

From what I recall about brain activity, images are processed differently from written words. If the brain processes images and written word differently, how much does reading habit influence image perception?

Excellent point, elaborated upon by George DeWolfe here:
Chapters 1 & 2 ....




?uncomfortable anyone make sentence this reading does, again, curiosity of Out


Bob


Feb 22, 2012 at 03:04 PM
Skarkowtsky
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p.1 #19 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


Auntie,

If you reread my initial post, you might come to understand that I'm referring to the perception of 'progression' and the psychology of what is perceived in Western culture as forward motion. I use reading as a reference, because more people spend more time with words, than they do with images. Especially in their formative school years. It does train the eye-to-brain relationship to accept left-to-right as a standard.

In the case of this photo, the fence, or leading line, leads away from the crouching subject in a left-to-right direction. Compositionally speaking on the same matter, it leads right out of the frame, and doesn't 'lead' to any points of interest before running out of the frame.

My point being: If you're using a dominant visual path such as that fence, and you're going to utilize the left-to-right progression, don't put the focal point all the way to the left, with no compositional elements to the right, but then use a leading line that does nothing but carry a viewer out of the photo. There's nothing that it leads to, compositionally speaking.

What happens here is that the viewer gets stuck on the crouching figure, than quickly scans the fence and leaves the photo.


Feb 22, 2012 at 03:17 PM
PerlaD300
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p.1 #20 · Back facing and long leading line - is this working at all?


WOW...what a great conversation and psychology lesson for me :-).

When I was about to post the image here, I had a hunch that the anchoring at the end of the fence was missing and there was nothing to hold the eye in the picture. I contemplated to leave the RFH road to give the eye a nook at the end of the fence as a holding point but the road was too distracting (may be just for me). Also, I was tempted to flip the picture to put the guy on the RFH instead of LHS but held off to get a sense of what this composition could bring in as an input for me.

I do agree with Skarkowtsky / Autipode discussion here. I agree with Skarkowtsky that typically my mind perceived Left to Right as a progression and I was also confused on how to hold my eye at the end of the line to keep the eye in the picture. Bob's suggestion to crop the RHS to keep the eye in the picture helped. I still think if we leave the original composition (because I liked the end of the fence disappearing into the snow) but somehow anchors with a really nice tree/element would have been great (which was of course not there originally).

Bob, thanks for the suggestions and I didn't realize till I saw your version about the posts.
Scott...thanks for the encouraging comments. I figured what you were referring to once i saw Bob's version about clock wise turn.

And to Autipode's comments, that with the composition that I did, where the prominent element is on the LHS, I was trying to defy the natural progression perspective to see if this composition gives me a stronger image/different image to my viewer.

But, in all honesty, i just loved reading the comments from you guys and it shows how much more it takes to make a great picture :-).



Feb 22, 2012 at 05:20 PM
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