Open Mike: Skychaser

We've been blessed with some wonderful weather here lately. I wish it could stay like this all Summer.

This was just on the way to dinner and back a couple of nights ago—

I certainly love living in an area I find photogenic—it's just so beautiful here.

I think I'm starting to feel just a little bit of sympatico with stormchasers, too. When I saw that sky in the third picture, I went racing off to a place where there's an open field and I knew I'd be able to see it. 

The weather's supposed to be great again tomorrow. I think I know what I'll be doing.

Have a great weekend!

Mike

(P.S. As you know I never write about pool, but if I did, this would be your shot of the day for today. Shane is badly in jail and has almost no hope of a way out and watch what he does.)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Luke Smith: "Farmland."

Michael Perini: "Living in a physically beautiful place is good for the soul. I listened to a talk given by Eileen Rafferty on the Creative Muse in Photography. She makes the case through examples that the Muse is often a person, but that it certainly can be a Place.

"Personally I feel this very strongly. I live in two places separated by 200 miles, Bucks County Pennsylvania and Montauk Point in New York. Both are physically beautiful, but when I am in Montauk I have a much stronger need to photograph, which brings with it an energy to get out and look—to document the ephemera of weather and place. It makes my time there far more enjoyable, and the work I do seems better. So my experience is that a place can indeed serve as a creative muse."

Dale: "Yes, it's good to appreciate where you are. Four years ago I moved from the American Midwest to Reno, Nevada. We're surrounded by mountains, lakes, desert, big skies, all of it. Lake Tahoe is 50 minutes away, the California coast is a three and a half hour drive, the Eastern Sierra is less than three hours away. I'm still pinching myself to make sure this is real, and it feels like a perpetual, limitless playground, photographically and otherwise. Yes, it's important to appreciate where you are, especially when it's this rich...."

K Berke: I agree with another commenter who observed that the first picture calls for a different focal length, or at least a bit of cropping.

"All I did was crop your photo to show what a lovely landscape photo you actually have here."

Mike replies: Thanks. I don't agree with that, though. I tried lots of options including (more or less) that one, from several different standpoints (until the cloud changed too much), and then spent some time "feeling into" which one I liked best. To me the plowed field is important to the picture in several ways. First, it provides contrast for the yellow-green bands of flowering ground cover. Second, it better implies the hilliness of the land—your crop makes it look like the land is flat, or close to flat, which it isn't. Third, I think there's a subliminal visual thing going on where the dark plowed earth makes the rest of the scene feel like it's on top of a cliff or up on a shelf—raised up, somehow, by the thick dark visual band at the bottom. I'm not saying that sounds elegant put into words, because it certainly doesn't, but to me that vague feeling is there in the picture. One reason is because the feel of the picture changes depending on how light or dark I make the plowed field; when it's lighter it "reads" more as mere foreground:

Stepping back, this brings up two issues that interest me: one is that each of us does with our pictures what we want to. I'm not saying your crop is bad or wrong—it's just yours is all, and happens not to have been my choice. Given that it's my picture, I have the option of considering what you suggest and either going with it or going with my choice. Same with everybody of course.

The flip side of this is just as important—which is that we can get valuable insight from others about improvements we can make in our pictures, and it's unwise never to pay attention to that kind of input. Whether it's one insightful friend (two, in this case!) or an accumulation of knowledge from a large succession of viewers, other peoples' reactions and opinions can be very valuable in shaping your work...whether it's one picture, a project, or the direction of your work as a whole.

So I think the best general advice under this heading is to be respectful of suggestions and opinions, but in the end remember it's your picture and you always have the option to...er, stand your ground (sorry :-).

Comments

[John Howell]

I feel the same, Mike! We've been nearly three years on the edge of Melbourne and I still find it very photogenic. Here's a grab-shot with my phone from early this morning as I set up the parkrun course with my son. It's winter here now, and everything's getting green again after summer...

[YTC]

“Sky appreciation” is among the reasons that I’ve enjoyed making photos of my “home place" - merely farmlands, not even photogenic.

[Mark Sampson]

Ornette Coleman once made a record called "Skies of America". I always wanted to steal that title for some of my own work... since I haven't yet, you have my permission to do so. Because you're probably a good way along on that project... keep up the good work!

[John Krill]

I just wanted to comment on John Howell's photo.It is terrific. The first thing that came to mind was the Hudson River School of landscape painting that was popular in the 1800s here in America. That dead tree in the right corner really makes the photo.

Good work!

[Richard Nugent]

Mike, Have you seen this on Vimeo. Amazing, both the artistry and the weather...scared too.

https://vimeo.com/219046468

[Brian Taylor]

May was fantastic here in the Pennines (North of England) too. Last night the hill tops lit up orangey-yellow for 15 minutes or so, as they often do, but with an intensity I don't remember witnessing in my 40 or so years of living here. It was sublime.

I took a few photos for the record but had to concede that no photographic image (that I could take) was ever going to do justice to a moment like that.

[Yes, I know what you mean. Of these four photographs, I found it curious that the third one was by far the most spectacular sky, but it is not very spectacular as an 800-pixel-wide JPEG, not even the best of these four (I don't think).

Photography is different than reality.... --Mike]

[Ken Tanaka]

Yup. In my case my view is my frequent "muse". In my current process of moving and reimagining my web site I decided it's time to just come out of that closet and show some of that work. See the "From Here" gallery. Lots more coming.

[David Blanchard]

Clouds and sky—my favorite subject(s) for photography.

[Richard Tugwell]

I gave up landscape photogrpahy a while ago becasue although I often had access to spectacular landscapes I could never capture the essence of "being there". I fear that photography, or even painting, cannot replicate the experience of nature just by representing it in some limited 2D format.

That's not to say there aren't some great landscape photos - but they are their own thing, not a substitute for the experience

[Eric Erickson]

Mike, the first image just begs for a longer focal length. Stay with one camera and buy a few lenses. It is a great subject and wonderful light but you need to be closer. Who said to take a better picture get closer. With this image it is true. Enjoy your weekend.

[Alexander Patoni]

I must be spoiled, we get beautiful sunsets like this so often in Western Australia that it's hard to decide which ones deserve a photograph. Adding to the problem is that I've already seen the greatest sunset I will ever see - an amazing array of pinks, oranges,purples and blues, with stars spread our across it, with the whole firmament spread out above as we swam in the ocean. I didn't have my camera with me, but in any case there I don't have the ability to convey the impression this sunset could have made on me in a photograph.

[JG]

Landscape photographers will already know this, of course, but as a reminder to everybody else: Turn around occasionally!

That's because however incredible the sunset in front of you might be, sometimes the sunset behind you will be even better!

Trust me about this. I have lived in Arizona for more than 30 years now, which means that I'm almost an expert sunset watcher. 8^)

[bongo]

Maybe level the horizon line in number one?

[It wasn't level in reality. The camera was level. See "Level With Me":

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2017/05/level-with-me.html

--Mike]

[Michael Perini]

Mike.
Re your 4 photographs and the weakness of JPEGs
The original experts who designed the JPEG format and modes of compression did an amazingly good job in figuring out how to 'fit'
a "hundred pounds of RAW Data in a 1 pound container,
But in my experience no subject tests the limits of JPEG compression more than landscapes-- especially those with colorful skies.
Issues with missing data and out of Gamut color appear all the time.
When the JPEG has to be of reduced size, things only get worse.
It often sucks the life out of them.

[James]

Thank you for the link to pool... It's Ramadan, and every year, I struggle to find something soothing and calm to take some of the edge off of all the stress and negativity that comes out of people when they're fasting all day. Last year, it was Bob Ross and the Joy of Painting... This year, looks like it's old 8-ball tournaments. GoGo.

[Svein-Frode]

Terrible advice going on here... The suggested cropping ruins the landscape for me. The scale and context is much better portrayed in the original photo in my opinion. Also, there's nothing special about the big cloud in the cropped verison. In the original version you can realy see how the cloud in the middle stands out in an otherwise uninteresting sky.