What makes this landscape photograph GREAT - 001

hi i'm alistair ben and you're watching espresso photography and welcome to what makes this photograph great uh the first image that i'm going to look at in this new series that's going to come on a regular basis is by an incredible photographer called newborn burnell this photograph is called embers and it came on my radar a few days ago and i just thought i really want to talk about this photograph so i contacted neil he sent me over the large res file and i've had a really great look at it and i want to talk about why it makes it so amazing this is of course my personal opinion all photography is subjective and all of our preferences are subjective but what i want to do in this new series is start talking about the attributes and the qualities of the photograph that make me feel something that make me buy into it so let's jump straight into the photograph and start talking about some of the things that have really caught my eye and caught my imagination i think the first thing to notice is that it creates a feel straight away the coolness the darkness with that hint of warm light in the background so the overall feel with that dynamic sharp shard of i think it must be slate um it's so instant there's a lot of impact now not all great photographs have to be impactful but they need to make you feel something and they need to guide you they need to give you information that's going to stir your heart particularly these days when you're scrolling through thousands of photographs on a daily basis something stands out and what i want to do is look at why this one stands out so we've got this quite cool color space where heavy clouds below the beautiful dark beach underneath and there is a coolness to it but it's not super blue it's not been so saturated that it's like overly blue and this is a pitfall that i see an awful lot or not pitfall but something that happens quite a lot where you see images that are just too saturated too blue this feels blue without it being in your face kind of blue so the coolness of the image and the darkness of the vignette makes it feel very contained very heavy very dark and it makes me feel uh brooding and ominous but it's making me feel these things there's a there's a response to how the image is being presented to me that makes me feel a certain thing the other thing to really notice here is just this beautiful warm light with warm glowing light on the horizon there now i don't know if it's sunrise or sunset and that's the material because it's the impact of the color that's raising my heart yeah the fact that it's embers makes me think that it might be sunset and it's the dying light of the day and that we're getting nearer to a nighttime sort of scene so we've got the warmth on the horizon there and that is drawing you through the frame there's a psychology to visual design there's a psychology to how humans will relate to photographs and the warm light in there is a ray of hope it's joyfulness it's it is just pure energy and that's exactly what it is sunlight tons of energy tons of emotion tons of feeling hope joyfulness celebration all of these types of words come into my mind now from a compositional point of view there's some really interesting decisions here that i think are really worth mentioning it's very easy to arrange things on the rule of thirds you know to have the horizon on the third line or you know you know either in the top third or the bottom third and what neil's done with this photograph is we've it's not quite 50 50 there's a fraction more sky than there is ocean but it's quite equitable you know it's kind of 50 50ish and that giant shard of slate is bisecting the the horizon there and what that's doing is is it makes us feel somewhat in balance when you have a lot more foreground than sky it becomes very here related it becomes very foreground related and likewise when you have an awful lot more sky than foreground it becomes about that this photograph is about the slate shard and the warm light and everything else is context the the shutter speed which looks like it's probably in the kind of four second five second mark has created enough flow maybe slightly less than that yeah maybe less so i'll go with i'll go with two seconds i don't know i haven't looked at the exit data but again that shutter speed is almost immaterial it's obviously been you it's that choice of shutter speed has been used with intent the amount of flow necessary to frame the the slate shard there to get some sense of movement round about it to not create too many other distracting elements we've already got a lot of rock in this frame there's the big shard there's some other boulders there's the headland there coming in from the right hand side there's a lot of static rocky elements and the shutter speed i think has been very masterly decided upon because it's created some framing for that foreground and it's also given us a bit of motion that's diffusing some of that chaos um i would refer back to last week's video where i made a judgment about the short shutter speed being a bad photograph or not a very good photograph i got quite a lot of criticism about that and i appreciate that i'm not usually as judgmental but i think obviously i had in my mind that i had a preference of those three photographs shutter speed is a preference shutter speed has consequences and i think neil has used the shutter speed here to great effect i would imagine on a night like this by the ocean those clouds would have been moving quite a lot as well and it's managed with the shortish shutter speed to retain detail in these clouds detail on the horizon there and i think it's it's adding texture it's adding um definition to these clouds there is lots of dreamy areas in this frame as well the aspect ratio which i presume is 16x9 is x is emphasizing expansiveness and this is what aspect ratios do the choice of crop makes us think about expansiveness wide open spaces that in conjunction with the warm light and the flowing water gives us a sense of calm and this could become a very chaotic photograph it could be it could become a very challenging photograph but the the wide angle the wide 16x9 aspect ratio coupled with the water coupled with the warm light counteracts the heaviness of the clouds on the top and the dark beach below the shard of course is a very dynamic thing i talk at great length in all of my books luminosity and contrast in particular about geometry and this is about angles we have a very sharp triangle here this beautiful tower of gran of slate which just looks stunning and then these faces in here the thing that i think he's done so well is how thoughtfully he has uh dodged the left-hand side of that shard it's very easy with photographs like this to over-dodge to over-lighten to create an unnatural amount of light on that left-hand side this feels like reflected light it feels like it's bouncing back off something or there's an area behind him that doesn't have so many clouds that's still got a little bit of light in it as well so it feels thoughtful and you can see it's mirrored here on these faces on the right hand side every photograph ever made whether it's by a famous person or to someone picking up for a camera at their camera for the first time every photograph can be analyzed every photograph can be dissected and this series that i'm starting now is a way for us to look at photographs with a very critical eye now i'm not going to critique this photograph beyond what i've said so far i personally don't think it's got any faults in it not nothing that really springs to my mind and this is so important it's very easy if you're thinking about a piece of music if there's a wrong note in there or an unnatural note there it stands out this photograph feels contained it feels as if there are no flaws so nothing stands out as a flaw and that helps us to engage it helps us i've always said that a flaw in a photograph whether it's a sense of spot or an unlevel horizon or some unnatural looking processing is like a splinter that you get in your finger it might be a tiny tiny thing but it it it's like your full focus of your being is on this tiny little imperfection that's stuck in your finger in this photograph i am not sensing any imperfections so i can just immerse myself in the mood the feel the atmosphere how it's challenging me the questions it's asking me all of these things are in this photograph a really good photograph should challenge you it should make you ask questions it should make you dream it should make you long for spending time in nature and being out and connecting with the world around you a good photograph should change your behaviors and i think what i'll do is i want to finish this little segment today with a message which is i've always said back in the day when i was starting to write articles there are three stages of engagement the first stage lasts for a fraction of a second it's literally instantaneous when we see something for the first time and it's oh i like that or no i don't like that it's an it's a subconscious decision that we have no no thought about and we have no control over when this image popped up in my feed i just thought i love that and i actually messaged neil straight away and said listen i want to do this series because i want to talk about this photograph so this is how this is all started that's that first sense of engagement is first impressions bang love it second impressions which last from a fraction of a second probably through to two or three seconds might be on social media where you decide to give it a thumbs up or a like or or whatever or maybe even a comment it's just a yeah i really like this i'm gonna say something more about it should we choose to look at it longer 5 seconds 10 30 seconds minutes hours i could look at this photograph for a long long time and it would ask more and more questions of me the second stage of engagement is just that there's something about this that i want to comment on that i want to react to the third stage of engagement changes your life photographs like this make me want to be a better person photographs like this make me feel like i want to spend just a little bit more time on my craft again to just iron out laziness and just iron out any imperfections that may creep in just because we don't have to think too much about it photographs like this really are mirrors to your own soul the longer you look at this photograph the longer it's going to challenge you to say who are you and i admire that in neil's work not just this image but in many of his other images please check out neil's website i'm putting a link to that in the notes below this series is very much for my own entertainment as much as hoping it's going to be useful to you viewers who are watching i want to celebrate the work of people who i admire i want to celebrate the work of the the people who inspire me to be a better version of myself and i want to help the community focus on the the great work that's out there so if you like this stuff please hit the subscribe button give me a thumbs up and all that jazz we're really hoping that we can continue to highlight and showcase the work of many amazing photographers over the months to come and of course i will continue with my education videos on a regular basis as well so keep tuning in and i look forward to speaking to you again very very shortly now i hope you've enjoyed this amazing photograph by neil barnell and yeah check out his website as well because he's got some incredible photos on there and of course he has products that you could purchase if you want to support his work further thanks for tuning in i will speak to you again very very soon but for now embers by neil bernell [Music] you

Channel: Expressive Photography

Views: 6,587

Keywords: Lightroom, Photography, Alister Benn, Landscape photography, how to, tutorials, composition, educate, expressive photography, barriers, vision, experience, tutorial, lesson, be better, happy, motivation, inspiration, inspire, Luminosity, Processing, Understanding light, Light, landscape, emotion, personal development, contrast, Transitions, Adobe, creativity, abstraction, local, dodge and burn, masterclass, Kase Filters, Wolverine, Magnetic, K9, Grads, Polariser, remote, learning to see, seeing, looking, Neil Burnell

Id: -o74r1yVB2A

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021