Aeolian Bazaar

Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction

Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.

Questions to guide your feedback

  1. There are many amazing sand dune images out there (looking at you @Jennifer_Renwick), such that I think it can be a challenge to not be overly influenced by the work you admire in others (excellent comments about this on last week’s F-Stop, Collaborate and Listen, @Alfredo_Mora). Is there a unique perspective in this image, or is it too derivative of the great work others are already doing?

  2. This is a 32-image focus stack. I tend to like to get everything in sharp focus when I compose an abstract scene, but I think there are times I’m missing out by not using selective blur. What if only the foreground were in sharp focus, but the background texture were more soft?

Other Information

Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.

Image Description

I made a weeklong foray to the Mojave/Sonoran region earlier this month, hoping to get warm and try my hand at photographing a region in which I have spent very little time. I love sand dune photography, but really wanted to capture something my own rather than something similar to so much of the excellent work made by other photographers much better than me. That was a really hard task! Here, we walked out into the dunes and bivy-camped for the night (these are not in a national park, doing so is allowed). This is an image made a short time before sunset, not far from where we laid out our bags for the evening. My intent with this composition was to capture that feeling of lying down in the sand, drifting to sleep as a soft breeze pushed sand grains past our heads.

Technical Details

183 mm, f/18, 1/50th sec, ISO 100. Stack of 32 images processed in Helicon Focus. Processed in LrC and PS to enhance contrast and emphasize the golden glow of the late afternoon light.

Specific Feedback

I’m particularly interested in your insights on the aesthetic and emotional qualities of this image. Thank you!

1 Like

Hi Jeff, thank you for the mention. I appreciate your listening to my talk with Matt on his show.

Is there a unique perspective in your image? Yes I believe so! I searched for some wisdom from Guy Tal and found a most excellent article on the value of originality.

The fatal flaw in disregarding the importance of originality, in my opinion, is in placing disproportionate value on the aesthetic appeal of the resulting image, to the detriment of the photographer’s inner experience in the process of making it.

I believe that creativity and originality are most important, not as conditions for art or for any bearing they may have on the perceived value of an image or other product, but rather in elevating the emotional and intellectual experience of the person making the art.

I believe the key to what Guy Tal wrote is the inner experience in making the image. You saw something in this dune scene that grabbed your attention. Something that called to you. You arranged your composition not haphazardly but perhaps guided by your own life experiences whether you were consciously aware of it or not. Essentially, the final image you have shared is a mirror, not to the landscape itself but to you the photographer.

Whether your image is “successful” or not is a separate question. My own criteria for my own work is simply this: Does this image evoke an emotional response? Does it prompt further exploration and questions?

I say yes to both questions when i viewed your image. The lines of the sand draw my eyes inward. The patterns are simply amazing giving the image a sense of movement. It would be interesting to see how this would be perceived rotated vertically. A black and white treatment would also be worth exploring. Thanks for sharing and great image!

Jeff,

Wow! I’d say a mind-bender is my initial reaction; mesmerizing, deceiving… certainly one of those images or drawings that if you stare at it long enough, the image moves or transforms in to something else? Hopefully some of that makes sense.

Yes, it’s pretty clear these are ripples in sand, but what you’ve created with the use of the focus stacking, is something that is NOT your standard dune fare - not in the least. This is a unique and creative vision here. The fact that the top, middle, bottom and sides are all equally sharp has created a deception of sorts - scale and depth are mysteries here. It’s like if I look at this any longer, the sand will begin shifting right before my eyes…

Here’s where I depart ways with many I suppose. I wasn’t there and so have no emotional connection and my reaction is more literal - ie. this is a mind puzzle for me. This doesn’t “bring me there”, ie. laying down in the sand. Which is NOT to say this does not have an emotional appeal; and reference Alfredo’s quote from Guy’s words:

What matters is that your “experience” of the dunes was a huge success in elevating YOUR interpretation and experiene of the dunes.

Outstanding image!

My initial reaction was that I was looking at a optical illusion. I like how there is something recognizable about the image, but yet it feels difficult to pin down at the same time, if that makes any sense. I don’t know if this resonates at all with your experience, but I’m also getting a sense of movement and warmth. Fascinating image.

@Alfredo_Mora, thanks very much for your thoughtful reply. I think you are touching upon a fundamental tension that many photographers seem to share: should we be making images only motivated by a desire to please our own sense of aesthetics, or is it more important (or at least equally important) that we make images that appeal to a wider aesthetic standard? Like you, I do not make images because I seek to generate income, but rather as a an outlet for creative expression that doesn’t otherwise occur within my paid career as a scientist and educator. However, I am motivated to share images because I do have a desire to create images that are recognized by others for their ability to evoke that emotional response you describe, and there are certainly are rules … well, let’s say guidelines … of composition that seem to effect a shared definition about what is evocative. Maybe that makes me vain? Maybe the most altruistic artists shares their work not because they want recognition but rather in the simple hope that even a single someone else will have their own emotional response to the image. I do know that if I am completely honest with myself, my search for originality is more motivated by my vanity and desire for recognition than it is a sense of artistic altruism. So, if that’s the case, focusing solely on my inner experience in the process doesn’t seem as likely to achieve that recognition as does trying to be an audience pleaser. Wow. That got much more navel-gazy and existentially angsty than I intended. Anyway, thanks for your comments here and on the podcast.

1 Like

@Lon and @DeanRoyer, thanks for your kind words about the image. As per my comments to Alfredo above, you have validated my artistic “altruism” and satisfied my artistic “vanity”, ha ha.

Reaction before reading photographer’s intent and others’ comments
The depth of field and detail is quite nice. It looks like sand dunes, but is that a great thing for an abstract? If a narrow horizontal crop were taken, would the dark area with a fringe of lighter ripples convey an emotional effect without the viewer stopping after quickly concluding “Oh this is sand dunes ripples.”?

Thanks @Dick_Knudson for your comment. I suppose your comment strikes at “what exactly is an abstract?” Some, and I guess you fall into this camp, believe that an abstract image is one where it is difficult to identify the feature being captured. I tend to fall more in the camp of an abstract being an isolated sliver of a larger landscape, whether it is readily recognizable or not. Perhaps this image is better classified as a “small scene” in landscape photography’s current parlance.