Monday Missive — March 28, 2022

Quotes

“Art is about finding creativity in the gutter next to you.” —Olafur Eliasson

“Don’t just make photographs; make something with the photographs.” — David DuChemin

“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.” — Barbara Kingsolver

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Moody twilight cityscapes
— John Dyer: Edge of Texas
— Phyllis Galembo: Sacred Space

Field and Studio
— Timothy Fadek: How to cover the war in Ukraine Brief article but very serious stuff!
— Face-to-face with wildlife
— Tom Heaton: White Wilderness

Miscellaneous
— In-game photography This is new to me and not something I would ever have thought of doing.
— David DuChemin: That was fun, but now what?
— How Kodak’s Estar film base is made
— Understanding NFTs

Continuing “What do you think/”
These images were taken during an artist residency at Big Cypress preserve in SW Florida. The scenes are all about the sky, where the clouds are the subject and the foreground gives context or scale. The first question I asked myself was “vertical” or “horizontal”? In general, I prefer my landscapes to be “landscape” (horizontal), because the scenes are usually more horizontal than vertical.
In the first image, the balance emphasized the sky over the marsh, but not by much, especially when you consider the reflections of the sky in the water. In the second, the dramatic sky dominates at about 80% of the image and the foreground trees are silhouettes. However, at the very top of the image there is little detail and I could have cropped down to make a less vertical image. For both of these I think the portrait (vertical) orientation was appropriate despite my general preference for landscapes to be horizontal. Do you think I should have cropped the image down from the top? What do you think?

In the third image the foreground is given minimal mass, and the image is clearly about the clouds. But the trees do give scale. However, the lack of trees on the right seem to me to unbalance the image. Should I have cropped this square to focus on the most dramatic part of the clouds, balanced by the trees as a complete foregound?

Finally, the 4th and 5th images are the same image, except that the fifth image is cropped square with a little off the bottom, and I cropped the empty sky at the top. I though this would improve the image, but now it looks cramped and compressed. What do you think?