The forests from Bizkaia in the north of spain are truly beautiful, even more in Autumn when the fog come to gratify us from a really magical and mystical atmosphere.
It's always challenging to PT an image with foggy conditions, you have to find the right limit between contrast and softness.
I love the atmosphere. I'm just not sure about the composition. This is definitely just a preference thing, so don't take it as a fact, but I feel like photos using fog should be a little less busy.
My first thought was, "is that person supposed to be there?" The placement seems a little off and I'm not entirely sure you need them there (I'm going to venture a guess that it's you). To me, a person in a landscape should do at least one of two things, tell a story, or be used for scale. I don't really feel like the person being in the photo is doing either of those things because I had to ask myself if they were supposed to be there, or it was another photographer who happened to be there. Furthermore, the placement of the person seems a little off in the composition. I'm not saying you always have to follow "the rules" but having an important feature of the photo that close to the edge, tends to devalue the importance of that thing, at least to me (unless you have a clear intent or statement, like in contemporary art).
Next, we have what I'll call an "almost leading line", because the creek starts from the bottom of the image, moves nicely across the image, and then is abruptly cut off by a tree in front of the location where it's being cut off.
After that my eyes just kind of wandered around not knowing what to stop on, because there doesn't seem to a clear subject after the person and the tree in the foreground.
I see some nice, thick fog in the background, so it might have been worth pulling out a longer lens to focus on a more subtle image. Maybe even setting up closer to the creek and facing down/up stream if it's leading towards anything.
These are all just personal thoughts, so I could be totally off and this could be the best photo ever taken, in the eyes of others. Sorry it if came across as too negative.
Thanks for your detailled critique ;)
something like this?
I decided to shoot wide to give my perception, that you can easly been lost in this forest.
The human is not the subject, the forest is the subject itself, it's only an addon a presence.
Personally I don't like the cropped version because:
1) you loose all the strength of the foreground tree
2) you loose the coming light coming from the right corner
3) you loose the leading line from the river.
Have a nice day.
gotcha that makes sense now knowing the idea and intent behind the photo..all valid points just throwing out an idea still love the capture
beautiful scene i love fog....just makes everything look so much better in the woods.
If you have time to revisit - go into the stream and use that as a leading line. The trees are very interesting.
I agree with you Loretta. Getting down into the stream and having it lead into the photo between the trees on both sides would make for a wonderful photo IMO :)
I love the feel of the photo with the fog, nice capture Lionel :)
What a great pic. We all have a choice to analyse everything we view or every person we meet. I am guilty of that but sometimes I think we can look at something and perhaps say well that's not perfect or that person is flawed here or there when in reality it or they can be just plain lovely which I think this is. Notice how in effect I have just analysed all the comments. Notwithstanding that it is great to get the feedback from everyone here to make us think.
This is a great shot. I like the mood. And indeed, with that description the photo makes even more sense. On th eother hand, a photo must work without any description (of course there are exceptions in journalism and so on).
But what I want to say: I've been there twice on my 5 days photo trip to Bizkays (with excursions to Cantabria and Navarra), Until now, nearly two weeks later) I am still stunned by the wonderful region that is nearly unknown to photographers (although parts of Game of Throwns are filmed here). I only met other photographers twice. In this forest and in Gaztelugatxe. There are so many opportunities here, it is so diverse. I wouldn't have dreamed of. It was definitely the right decision to come here. Besides that I made good experiences with the local people, food, infrastructure in general and so on.
So, visit Bizkaia but don't tell anybody. Otherwise we'll get a new Horseshoe Bend, Fitzroy, Matterhorn or something like that ;-)