Figure in landscape

It's a lovely image.
May I ask where it was taken? It reminds me of Black Rock Sands.
 
SFTPhotography said:
I have to say I would much rather not have the figure ...
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Not often I agree with you Steve, but here I think I do. Not that figures are my bêtes noires, I can accommodate them easily, but I do trend towards a horror of symmetrical reflections ... to each his own!

Maybe it's not the figure in this that's problematic, but rather that the sun isn't a disc - along with its surrounding sky, it's a burnt-out splash. Not pretty.

Not that photographs have to be pretty - that's a fast-track towards the anodyne. But at best they might retain a certain aesthetic dignity, even if that alone doesn't embody the crucial message.

I feel that you've blown it here, John. I don't think that the fried egg look does anyone any favours. Sorry!
 
I like the figure- it gives the whole scene a sense of scale :)

Les

Ps when you say REMOVED the dog- I do hope you meant cloned :LOL::LOL::LOL:
 
I like the image as it stands, person included; - although I think it's as much to do with the positioning of the figure as a silhouette bathed in gold.
Covering up the figure doesn't retain the image dynamic for me.
 
Thanks for all the comments. Obviously two 'marmites' - whether to include a figure or not; and the sun. The first is never going to be agreed (even by me arguing with myself). The sun - droj, I take your point. However the sun does not appear as a disc when shining through thinnish cloud; nor is the highlight blown in this picture. I can tolerate a fried egg when it's a small part of the image, not when it's big. Here it may be at the 'marmite' limit?
 
I normall prefer landscapes without people. However, I think that this shot works either way. Super shot without the figure and with the figure a sense of lonliness is introduced.
 
I much prefer landscapes to be "lived in"

I also prefer townscapes and to include all the ephemera of the day, as it give a sense of time and place.

From the earliest times people and activity were included in landscape paintings, and this tradition was continued by the great early landscape photographers.
It was only the rise of club/ saloon, "Pictorial Photography", at the start of the 20th century, that landscapes, townscapes and architectural photograph was emasculated by the removal of man, and the man made, from their "artistic" endeavours.

This is something still promoted today, in rather bland and sanitised images that have no relevance to time or place.
We seem to have lost the pride that the Victorians, and previous generation, had in their achievements and the daily life of their society.

I would have no objection to this sanitised version of Landscape photography continued.
Provided that the traditional "living" landscape work was given equal status.
It is always the "Living" land and townscapes that retain the greater interest from generation to generation.
It is Virtually all the neutered scapes that survive the demises of the author, that are then skipped by the next generation as valueless.
 
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For me a figure in a landscape is sometimes really good for indicating scale. Some landscapes just don't need a figure, and some are crying out for one, IMHO. I like peanuts but not brussels sprouts (or Marmite) ;)
 
droj said:
Not often I agree with you Steve, but here I think I do. Not that figures are my bêtes noires, I can accommodate them easily, but I do trend towards a horror of symmetrical reflections ... to each his own!

Maybe it's not the figure in this that's problematic, but rather that the sun isn't a disc - along with its surrounding sky, it's a burnt-out splash. Not pretty.

Not that photographs have to be pretty - that's a fast-track towards the anodyne. But at best they might retain a certain aesthetic dignity, even if that alone doesn't embody the crucial message.

I feel that you've blown it here, John. I don't think that the fried egg look does anyone any favours. Sorry!
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The reflection in this case is hardly visible, however the shadow is how it was. and how it should be.
Much the same could be said for the aurora of the sun which is partly obscured by cloud, the sun itself is always burnt out, as is an aurora such as this.
 
Interesting points Terry. There is (at least one) exception - Caspar David Friedrich (b. 1774; why am I never sure I'm getting the bits of his name in the right order?) who did superb unpeopled landscapes - and some with people. And there are some works by Durer (much earlier) that just celebrate nature itself.
Given what humans have done to the natural world, doing justice to what we've left of it seems a very positive thing to do - but perhaps a very hard thing to do well.
 
JohnFar said:
Interesting points Terry. There is (at least one) exception - Caspar David Friedrich (b. 1774; why am I never sure I'm getting the bits of his name in the right order?) who did superb unpeopled landscapes - and some with people. And there are some works by Durer (much earlier) that just celebrate nature itself.
Given what humans have done to the natural world, doing justice to what we've left of it seems a very positive thing to do - but perhaps a very hard thing to do well.
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As they say, almost the whole of the UK has been sculpted by man. It was once 99% impenetrable forest. what we see now is what man made of it.
 
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