Hay Rolls

[Paul Lange]

Just wanted to see what people thought of this, I've done quite a bit to it in Photoshop; it's 2 photos exposed separately for sky and land and I put in some grad filters, brought out some of the hay stacks and added a high pass filter. Sometimes I get lost and overdo it.

 

[Hamish Gill]

I like it!
I might have given it a bit more sky and a bit less grass ... Maybe... Not sure

 

[Paul Lange]

I like it!
I might have given it a bit more sky and a bit less grass ... Maybe... Not sure

That seems unlike you Hamish.

 

[Vic Shaw]

I agree with Hamish, the sky is nice and would have been good to see more.

 

[Paul Lange]

Yeah, I thought of that but preferred less sky and more land. Cropping the grass meant that the horizon was exactly midway in the picture so wearnt too sure about that.

 

[Vic Shaw]

I think maybe the trouble here is (and I'm no Landscape photographer) is that the foreground interest is basically the grass, It would have been better if you could have got up closer to the hay bales, having said that maybe you was going for the showing the vast expanse of bales (which I only just noticed)

 

[Tim Pindar]

That mirrors a problem I have had with my own landscapes, where despite trying hard to get the foreground in focus, there just hasn't been enough interest there.

I guess this is the sort of effect Vic is referring to (I just googled and found this photo):

 

[Vic Shaw]

Even a few blades of grass can add foreground interest I guess ( that kinda contradicts what I said in my last post)

Heres a Hay Bale shot I did a while ago and never really liked.

Vic

 

[Paul Lange]

Thats quite nice Vic!

What I was aiming for was a shot that avoids immediate impact thats initially impressive but after the initial few moments the impact seems to fade as there is nothing else in the photo to hold interest. I find that the most satisfying, if not the most initially impressive, are the ones that hold my interest as youu have to look at it for a while before you sart to notice all of the elements in the image. This was what I was going for on this one.

I didnt make it clear but did anyone notice all the sky back in on the second picture?

Anyway isn't it weird how people seem to photograph the same things, hay bails seem to be a bit like doorways, magnets for photographers.

 

[Vic Shaw]

I did notice a little bit of sky back BTW just forgot to mention it.

Yes it is a funny thing how we are drawn to the same things. Long before I got a camera, about 15years ago I always had this idea in my head of a shot I wanted to do with hay bales. I had no idea about composition or anything then but I knew how I wanted the photo to look. Every year when they start to appear in the fields i feel the need to photograph them although this is the only one I have ever taken and it's pretty close to the one in my head.

I also have various other shots in my head that some day I will get round to doing, 1 of them is a series of pictures that I intend to turn into a book (god when I read this back it sounds like Close Encounters of the Third kind!)

 

[Darren Turner]

I like your image composition Paul, i do however feel that you have focussed on the green grass in the foreground, and the actual bales are out of focus somewhat :-(, maybe this was due to your choice of focus point or maybe it was an aperture issue. Sorry to be so negative but this is just my point of view.

How could you have improved this image? - simply moved closer to the bales and focused on maybe the closest one to your point of view, this would have given the image some foreground interest in focus, with following bales maybe slightly out of focus yet still keeping that moody sky and slightly less foreground grass for good measure.

The over all image is very good, so is your processing for my liking and the moody sky is great.

Daz

 

[Paul Lange]

Hi Darren, Its a fair point you have made. The bails are out of focus purely because I cocked up the Hyperfocus! I do have some more photos from various angles, this was just the first one I processed.