This page looks best in Firefox at 1280 x 1024px resolution or higher.
Background
View from Gaviota Peak, southeast into Santa Barbara Channel; my house should be visible to the upper left, but it only takes up about a thousandth of a pixel.
In this section I tried to arrange a personal image review for my friends and fellow Wikipedians who are either expert in the subject matter or have a prominent sense in color, composition and creative issues. Main reason behind creating this page is to get your feedback so that I can identify my best pictures and eventually nominate them as Featured Picture (FP) candidates. Note that if you are confident enough that one of my pictures deserves to be a FP, just feel free to nominate it.
And I write about
Pic 1
Hi Niaz - I am happy to respond to your request further advice, and will kick off with a few thoughts on composition. You have contributed to Composition (visual arts) so it should not be too novel for you. Note the points about harmony and balance, and the need for a focal point discussed in that article - also less obvious is the reference to the triangle. Three is very important in art. What that article does not seem to mention for landscape pictures is the need to have strong components at the side. These serve a dual function - firstly they keep the eye within the picture and stop it following a line out to the side; secondly they provide alternative foci of attention. In classic landscape composition a fundamental pattern is to have a large object on one side towards the front, a second object on the opposite side further back, and thirdly the focal point somewhere even further back and between the other two points (making the three). You can see this clearly demonstrated in the work of Claude Lorrain who is conidered to be one of the finest landscape painters ever. Have a look at other traditional landscapes and you cannot help seeing the pattern time and time again. So where does this leave your pictures?. The first one shows a very strong slope - which has the effect of sliding the viewer out of picture on the other side. There is a slight hump at the bottom of the slope and a perspective line giving a bit of depth but the line does not lead anywhere in particular - so these components are not strong enough to stop the strong force out to bottom right. The second picture is very nice and nearly there. There is a stong focal point which is reached along the line of lakes to top right. There is also strong component in the shape of the mountain to the left. Hopefully what you are now realising is what is needed is a larger component in the front right foreground - which will have the effect of balancing the mountain and framing the right hand side to stop any run-out before the focal point. Such a component could be used to add a story, or clues about scale' so a good choice could make this a very successful picture - except for one thing. Unfortunately there is a tree or something which cuts the large lake in half, spoiling its shape and value. In addition, because it is in line with the mountain it creates a strong vertical which splits the picture. However these comments are intended only within the context of classical composition. The personal value of the picture to the photographer overrides all that. Motmit (talk) 14:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
