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Brendan Reeves's picture

Ice cave in Hokkaido japan

Skied/snowshoed into this cave in Date, Hokkaido, Japan. It was full of lots of upside down icicles that resembled the Hattefatterners from Moomin. Have been playing with black and white lately, i like it but know nothing about black and white photography so just did what i thought looked ok.

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2 Comments

My thoughts: First of all, it's too dark to see what's going on in this image. The foreground, being furthest from the opening of the cave, is going to be darker than the background, but in this case it's almost completely black on the ceiling and the floor has no detail whatsoever. I've attached a copy with a radical Curves adjustment, but this is a crude attempt without the original file. If you shot this in RAW, you may be able to pull a lot of detail from the shadows.

More importantly, the composition troubles me. I think a slightly higher camera position would have separated the ceiling icicles from the floor stalagmites. Or maybe there was a location in the cave where an opening between the stalagmites would allow a clear view of the icicles in the background. As it is, I feel the two groups are forced to compete in the composition. The color cave shot in your profile is a better composition; maybe you could try converting that to B&W and see what happens.

You're lucky to have such an interesting place to photograph. I'd be in there all the time!

I prefer Phillip's edit to the original post and to his point about composition, would crop about 20% from the bottom and 5% or so from the top of the image. The outcome is an image which to me, creates abstractions of human forms packed together in a tight space.