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Michael Lacy's picture

Sunset Contrails?? Does it work or not??

You all have been posting some really great images and I really enjoy discussing them and especially seeing them. I find it very motivating to see all the great images you all are sharing. Lately here in Chicagoland we've had an amazingly warm start to winter, so all my usual winter shots just are not happening. Hardly any snow or ice...what's up! So I've been troubled to get some images that are interesting to share with the group. The sunset the other evening had contrails crossing the sky from planes going in and out of the two Chicagoland airports (O'Hare and Midway) so I got a few shots. Looking at them I was unimpressed but decided to see what a B&W version would look like. This is the better of them. It seems to capture my eye nicely but I'd like to get your input / thoughts. Thanks in advance - Mike

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3 Comments

I think it gives it an interesting look, especially with the black and white.

Reading your comments above Michael, you know it has merit but lacks something. I know when this happens, and it does happen to all of us I am sure, we photographers can sometimes struggle to figure out what the problem is. For outsiders there is no attachment to blind them to the image, so perhaps fault finding is easier.

So, with that in mind, I have been considering your sky shot and from my POV, I think it is a common problem with sky shots. Namely, to the photographer they are sky shots but to the viewer they are photographs. That is to say, the landscape component is part of the viewer's experience but less so for the photographer. Here, as is so often the case with sky shots, the land component has been essentially overlooked The trees are not working in the design of the shot, and that is the problem, imo. I recently looked at a young photographer's sky shots, which looked very nice but he had all sorts of naff street scenes and such-like cluttering his forgrounds, which degraded his fine skys to boring snaps.

My FS portfolio contains some landscapes, but in reality they could be considered skyscapes. They contain interesting subject matter on the ground, enhansed by the wonderful skys so kindly provided by a greater artist than any of us will ever be and the two components brought together within my frame. Are they landscapes or skyscapes? I don't think it matters what we call them. They are just fully formed photographs of significant landscape subjects, which very strongly feature a great sky, which makes the landscape subject look much more visually exciting than a regular sky could. They have not been well rewarded with stars, but this in no way changes my feelings, as they are emotionally charged, to me. I am used to this kind of scene and can appreciate the hellish beauty whilst people from more pleasant environments or with more conventional aesthetic sensibilities would obviously rather run a mile than spend hours being blasted by freezing winds and lashed by rain showers to make photographs of such ghastly and God forsaken wilderness. Who can blame them. But they miss the point, the horrid weather made the skys and the skys made the landscape. I may not be a JMW Turner but he had a way of including industry, ships and trains etc, with amazing skys. Constable and so many other painters too. But Turner, wow wow wow! and always with a subject that was vital to his art and unacceptably beyond the sensibilities of his day.

So approach your sky photography the other way round. Find places that look great when the weather is x, y, or z. Then be prepared to get you and your camera there when such a weather event crops up. Then you will shoot great skys and produce great pictures.

Here are some very different skys, all shot on the same evening, within a few hundred meters of each other. But I went there that evening because I know that after a wet and cloudy day any kind of sunset we might get will look good or even brilliant down at the South Gare, by the Redcar blast furnace.

Regardless of what you think of these photographs they illustrate my point, which is the sky shots work as photographs because the landscape components are of merit too and are a key part of the design, rather than just whatever happend to be under the sky at the time.

https://fstoppers.com/photo/100343

https://fstoppers.com/photo/100416

https://fstoppers.com/photo/100413

Thanks Ian. Great insights on foreground elements in these types of images.