vieri, very good works here.
nothing original, countless photos like these have been done, but it is one of the very few times that i was not bored to look at this kind of stuff, actually Very enjoyed. i call it illustrative photography, and many times, with those monumental landscapes, this goes into plain kitsch, kinda ansel adams emitation or postcard styles. in terms of artistic merit, those places are a challenge, they are so great that any photograph is dull compared to actually being there, and even when photographed well, it is tricky to take them beyond plain illustration (in order to add some artistic element "inside-out"), especially with realistic depiction (camera/material techniques). but uve made those illustrations so good - photo-aesthetics with light and sense of place with compositions - makes great impact.
btw, which linhof ? the new tech ?
Hey Victor, I agree with your concerns re: shooting in places that have been shot to death (pun intended), and though this would be matter for a different thread - and an interesting one at that! - until then let me just thank you for your comments, I am glad you enjoyed the images despite their seen-before subject matters
On my screen, Monument valley 's pics seems over saturated... but i've never went there, and i wasn't found of velvia stuff also...
Same for the tower of altar...
Is it really that red over there ?
Well, I was there multiple times and my eyes see it like Vieri shows in his images. If you look at my images they are at least as saturated - and I would not call them over saturated.
It is obviously a matter of taste what amount of saturation one likes. I am definitely not belonging to the species who like pictures so undersaturated that they are almost B&W.
Vieri,
my congratulations to this great work! I really like it!
Makes me feel I need to get there back pretty soon
"It is obviously a matter of taste what amount of saturation one likes. I am definitely not belonging to the species who like pictures so undersaturated that they are almost B&W. "
yes of course, but there is a balance between oversaturated and undersaturated.
with the advent of digital workflow using profile, charts... we can make pictures that are just neutral... not to say "real colors"... with every king of light.
that wasn't the case with film !
Anyway, i'm pretty shure that it still exists a different in perception... that's also a part of culture !
Interesting topic indeed - to me, it basically boils down to perception on one side, and endeavor on the other. What I mean is this: while it is true that with digital (and with film too, using the appropriate filtering) one can white balance for any light and get colors that are "exactly right" according to a grey card in pretty much any light, the question is, would anyone want to do that? My personal answer (and of course YMMV) is that at times, yes I do; in other situations, no thanks. An example: shooting architecture for a client, yes; shooting fine arts, no.
Coming to the photos here, well: there is a reason why they call it "red country", the rocks are indeed red especially after the sun has set and in the last, warmest light of the day. Do I want to correct WB in order to make them look gray or washed out like they look at noon? No, I don't, which is a reason why I don't shoot at noon in the first place; in fact, I even add a warming filter to daylight WB (or even shade WB) to enhance colors and warmth, if I think that it would help with my vision... thing is, I didn't try to be "forensic" here, I tried to record the exaggerate redness of what my eyes were seeing, according to my perception of the colors and my vision of what the final image would look like. That all said and done, for me what it boils down to is: are the images beautiful on their own, rather than are the images a faithful representation of what the place really looks like. Which - lastly - bring the whole thing away from me as the creator of the image and back into the eye of the beholder, where beauty stands (or does not stand): the final outcome of all the philosophic rambling above are pictures, and the final judges of these are those who look at the images and either like them or do not like them. As a final note, I am pretty sure that for every image by any photographer, even the greatest, there are those who do like it and those who don't - nothing is universally considered great by everyone or cr@p by everyone, meaning by the 100% of viewers, no exceptions: what makes one a public success or not, is just a percentage matter...
Might have to do a another Southwest workshop soon here.
Great idea Guy, the Southwest (as little as I have seen of it) looks like a never exhausted mine of photographic opportunity!