Landscape Photo Competition 2014 No 2 : Judges Critiques

An interesting and appealing shot which I have found myself coming back to. It is probably a moonlight photo (these can be really moody shots) which would explain the very soft contrast, so a clever night time photo. But the light is coming from the right which is a bit confusing when the moon is right there in the middle and the focal length of the lens doesn’t seem to correspond with the out of focus, zoomed-in moon.

A tricky shot to succeed. The great difficulty here is that you are looking into the sun and so you have an extremely broad dynamic range to expose correctly. As human beings, with our eyes connected to our brains, we manage to see the highlights and lowlights at the same time because our brain corrects an image that our eyes have seen through pupils with their very powerful aperture. Even the most modern reflex cameras cannot record the vast range of light that nature offers us and so we have a recurring problem of either well exposed dark shades with the highlights burned out, or well exposed highlights with all the dark areas too dark. Here you have tried to find a compromise but the result is that exposure is wrong in both the high and low lights. There are basically two ways around this. The modern, digital way “HDR” (High Dynamic Range) where you photograph the same scene with various exposures so as to be able to choose the correct exposure from the different frames and make one final image with those on the computer… or the traditional way (get the photo right in the field with just one shot) with the clever use of neutral density grad filters. The choice is yours, both techniques are largely accepted today. I personally enjoy the challenge of getting it right as a photographer and so invariably use the filters.

This is a nice minimalist approach. The black and white low exposure brings lots of detail to the snow and dark to the sky. It is nice to see the snow with such an unusually flat finish, making it look like something else. The inclusion of the shadow is interesting although I am somewhat confused by its meaning.

This is too urban without enough “nature at its best” for this theme. It is a nice idea though but sadly the binoculars are too out of focus for the message to be instantly evident.

A powerful minimalist view which catches our gaze. Your bold central framing is even bolder with the long exposure softening the sea into melted metal. The white sky adds to the minimal effect, the bird stains make the rock interesting and tell the story. I hope we’ll be seeing more of this.

Monument valley makes it through again thanks to this fantastic light and rainbow. Image resolution is too low for this to make the top place. Have you painted out the colour of the clouds?

This is a beautiful wild place and your photo is no doubt a great souvenir for you. It is though too empty to win a competition, I mean the composition of the photo, not the landscape. Panoramic views can be fantastic but they are very difficult to compose well. It is difficult when taking these pictures to visualize the final image when we are looking at such a wide view, and the scale of the image makes finding a prominent foreground subject difficult. Another problem with wide panoramas is that the light changes considerably depending on the direction we are looking, it may be beautiful here and not there. We see that in this photo; the light on the right hand side is lovely, lighting that bush from behind, throwing its shadow towards your feet. The backlight brings great detail and colour, that bush detaches itself from the background and would have been the perfect foreground subject, the pathways beyond leading away to the distant mountain… Next time you are confronted with a scene of this kind try and find a foreground subject and compose your photograph around that whilst thinking to show the real atmosphere of the place as well. In this case you could have framed a much tighter scene of that bush and the mountain on the right with a nice contrasting backlight, bringing the viewer’s attention to the warm colours of that bush, the lead lines from the paths and the distant mountain for a bit of scale. It was all there for you.

This is an extraordinary interpretation which I have enjoyed particularly. I cannot work out how you have done this. Is it zoom or are you walking along with the flowers in your hand? Anyhow it’s a lovely composition with a real atmosphere of the great outdoors.

This is a lovely mountain view with nice cool light. You have found a nice viewpoint and the wide angle shows us both sides of the valley. It is a shame that the clouds are a little washed out, perhaps a half stop darker would have been nicer, there is room in the dark tones for a darker exposure.

There are so many strong lines in this picture and nice pastel colours, but what makes it interesting is the story that it tells of the wind farm and the lights. You have done well framing what you have, all the elements add to the picture, no wasted space. Maybe the trees shouldn’t have been cropped like that – either not at all or a bit more. I like the 24t sign though and its contrasting shape. Very nice shot.