Rogg4n
Another Morning over the Enchanted Forest - Creux-du-Van - Switzerland
When you once started to post your pictures on a public space like Flickr (or any another service of this sort), your probably have in mind some criteria about what is worth posting. What is a good image ? How to make the difference between what's for the trash bin and your photostream ?
Most of the time, it's not difficult to answer these questions : you just have to look at the images and notice the effect it creates on you sensitivity. The difficulty begins when you have to justify your choice : what are the implicit and effective rules leading you to like or dislike a picture ? Of course, there's plenty of criteria. Some are really technical: is the rule of third respected ? is the subject properly lighted ? and so on. However, we all know that if these technical criterion are important, they are at best a first step to a good picture. Something more - which is not that easy to explain - is needed to get something that creates a real effect.
One of the criteria I started to follow when I got more and more seriously into photography is - I think - interesting because it's quite paradoxical. I personally think that all the pictures I really like (among the ones I took and the ones took by others) look as if they were taken in a fictional world, or at least not in the real world. In other words, if the picture smells too much of the boring reality of everyday life (with it's objects, poor light, colors, etc), I tend to consider them as esthetically defective. A good picture has to carry with it a world of its own which could be totally independent. I am not saying that this fictional world have to be "fantastic" or totally different than the real one. It could be "realistic". For example, a good street photo looks like it was taken in a real street. However, such picture would create the impression than the New York, London, or any city street on the picture is maybe not the real one. It's like a movie taking place in a real city : it's a real and an unreal space at the same time.
This idea can sounds a little bit strange when we consider the fact that photography IS the art of capturing the objective reality. Whatever the picture you take, it represent always a part of reality (I am not speaking of these 100% Photoshop creations. I am not a big fan). However, the art is precisely to take reality with some angles, light, colors, etc. that will create an impression of strangeness. It stops us in our life and make us thinking : "I never thought that a flower, a street, a landscape, a man, a woman, could look like that in my everyday world". If this criteria is not reached, if a picture is just the capture of a minute boring visual perception, then we are probably justified to say that it doesn't work.
Of course, most of the pictures we take cannot create this effect (it’s probably like a 1 / 1000 ratio). Most of the pictures of your parents and friends holidays cannot create this effect. That is why it's sometimes quite boring to watch them : it is so obvious that these places are real places! It is so visible that the reality is better than the picture ! How can such an image create a real emotion ? The only reasonable thing to do would be to go there by yourself : this kind of picture can't give you any hint of the emotion you could feel if you were there.
However, sometime, we successfully catch an image that has this "little thing" that changes everything and makes it potentially interesting for people who do not know you and have no interest in coming at the exact place where you took the picture. What makes the difference is often some very little details : the absence of a distracting object in the background that would recall too aggressively the reality, some blur at the right place, etc. The fictionality of a picture is quite fragile, that's why it is so difficult to get it.
I am now used to go at the Creux-du-Van to shoot the sunrise. I am always happy to do so. As always, I took a lot of images, trying new things. I also tried to recreate an image I already had (and already posted on Flickr). I had a precise idea in mind, I had my frame, my angle, and so on. However, I don't know exactly why, I try the same setting but I unzoomed at 10mm : then this frame of trees one the left and upper border appear and I realized that with the sun on the leafs, the roots and on this little pathway it looked quite magical. The only fact of passing from 14 to 10mm had - in my opinion - changed the picture and created the "unreal effect" : this could happen in a fairytale, this could be a magic tree in an enchanted forest. I spent two hours more after the sunrise on the place, taking panoramas and a lot of others "nice" pictures (I was secretly hoping to get something else that could create such an impression). But I knew the only worth posting picture would be this one ...
This picture was explored on the 26th of June 2016. Thank you !
Another Morning over the Enchanted Forest - Creux-du-Van - Switzerland
When you once started to post your pictures on a public space like Flickr (or any another service of this sort), your probably have in mind some criteria about what is worth posting. What is a good image ? How to make the difference between what's for the trash bin and your photostream ?
Most of the time, it's not difficult to answer these questions : you just have to look at the images and notice the effect it creates on you sensitivity. The difficulty begins when you have to justify your choice : what are the implicit and effective rules leading you to like or dislike a picture ? Of course, there's plenty of criteria. Some are really technical: is the rule of third respected ? is the subject properly lighted ? and so on. However, we all know that if these technical criterion are important, they are at best a first step to a good picture. Something more - which is not that easy to explain - is needed to get something that creates a real effect.
One of the criteria I started to follow when I got more and more seriously into photography is - I think - interesting because it's quite paradoxical. I personally think that all the pictures I really like (among the ones I took and the ones took by others) look as if they were taken in a fictional world, or at least not in the real world. In other words, if the picture smells too much of the boring reality of everyday life (with it's objects, poor light, colors, etc), I tend to consider them as esthetically defective. A good picture has to carry with it a world of its own which could be totally independent. I am not saying that this fictional world have to be "fantastic" or totally different than the real one. It could be "realistic". For example, a good street photo looks like it was taken in a real street. However, such picture would create the impression than the New York, London, or any city street on the picture is maybe not the real one. It's like a movie taking place in a real city : it's a real and an unreal space at the same time.
This idea can sounds a little bit strange when we consider the fact that photography IS the art of capturing the objective reality. Whatever the picture you take, it represent always a part of reality (I am not speaking of these 100% Photoshop creations. I am not a big fan). However, the art is precisely to take reality with some angles, light, colors, etc. that will create an impression of strangeness. It stops us in our life and make us thinking : "I never thought that a flower, a street, a landscape, a man, a woman, could look like that in my everyday world". If this criteria is not reached, if a picture is just the capture of a minute boring visual perception, then we are probably justified to say that it doesn't work.
Of course, most of the pictures we take cannot create this effect (it’s probably like a 1 / 1000 ratio). Most of the pictures of your parents and friends holidays cannot create this effect. That is why it's sometimes quite boring to watch them : it is so obvious that these places are real places! It is so visible that the reality is better than the picture ! How can such an image create a real emotion ? The only reasonable thing to do would be to go there by yourself : this kind of picture can't give you any hint of the emotion you could feel if you were there.
However, sometime, we successfully catch an image that has this "little thing" that changes everything and makes it potentially interesting for people who do not know you and have no interest in coming at the exact place where you took the picture. What makes the difference is often some very little details : the absence of a distracting object in the background that would recall too aggressively the reality, some blur at the right place, etc. The fictionality of a picture is quite fragile, that's why it is so difficult to get it.
I am now used to go at the Creux-du-Van to shoot the sunrise. I am always happy to do so. As always, I took a lot of images, trying new things. I also tried to recreate an image I already had (and already posted on Flickr). I had a precise idea in mind, I had my frame, my angle, and so on. However, I don't know exactly why, I try the same setting but I unzoomed at 10mm : then this frame of trees one the left and upper border appear and I realized that with the sun on the leafs, the roots and on this little pathway it looked quite magical. The only fact of passing from 14 to 10mm had - in my opinion - changed the picture and created the "unreal effect" : this could happen in a fairytale, this could be a magic tree in an enchanted forest. I spent two hours more after the sunrise on the place, taking panoramas and a lot of others "nice" pictures (I was secretly hoping to get something else that could create such an impression). But I knew the only worth posting picture would be this one ...
This picture was explored on the 26th of June 2016. Thank you !