Window in the Snow. Nederland, Colorado, 2013
For this week’s image I have chosen a recent architectural/travel image, made in the small mountain town of Nederland, just west of Boulder, Colorado.
And my standard call before I proceed: If you have been lurking about this web site and you’d like me to use your image for a Wednesday critique, just send me an e-mail (see Contact tab). That way, you can save me from critiquing my own images–which would be a welcome relief! Oh, and no names will be mentioned–it will be an anonymous critique.
OK, back to the photo o’ the week…I have my critic’s hat on and I am pretending this is the first time I’ve ever seen this photograph…here we go…
The metadata: Nikon D90 (1.5x crop factor sensor) with Nikkor 70-300 f/4-5.6 zoom at 180mm, f/8, 1/40, ISO400, handheld, outdoors with overcast skies.
And following my 7-Step Critique Guide…
1) EXAMINE. This image seems to be quite straightforward–a window on a weather-beaten, wooden-shingled roof, all covered with a layer of snow. Looking around the frame, I don’t see any other elements. Pretty simple.
2) EMOTIONAL RESPONSE. My initial response to this image is to feel cold–the snow and what looks like frost on the window all contributing to that, obviously. Does it imply a deeper story? Not as directly as I would have hoped. Perhaps I wonder who lives there and if they are warm inside their house on this cold winter’s day. Or, maybe I wonder about the age and history of the house. Maybe it does imply a certain mood of coldness and emptiness. But, I think a good image ought to grab you immediately and make you say to yourself…”Wow!”…or, “That’s really cool!”…or, “That’s interesting!” I only get a very mild such reaction when I look at this photograph.
3) TECHNICAL POINTS. Technically, the exposure, color balance and contrast seem fine. Often, it is difficult to get the exposure correct when shooting into large expanses of white–in this case, snow. In these situations, the camera will want to place the middle tones in middle gray thus underexposing everything, so it is common to have to dial in some amount of exposure compensation (adding exposure) in order to render the scene correctly. (Or, in post, assuming you shoot RAW, the white dropper can be used to set the whites and the exposure correctly.) The choice of f/8 was good as it allowed a reasonable depth of field, appropriate for this fairly flat scene, while also being right at the sharpness sweet spot of this particular lens. The shutter speed of 1/40, however, was quite slow for the selected 180mm focal length, and the fact that the image seems to be reasonably sharp on my monitor indicates that the photographer took full advantage of the Vibration Reduction (VR) capability of the lens (and/or she made various captures, selecting the sharpest to work with). The photographer must have noticed this slow shutter speed as I see ISO400 was used which kept her from having to shoot at 1/20th of a second at the base ISO of 200 for this camera, which would have been even more marginal. I will say that the bluish turquoise color of the board across the top of the window seems a bit over saturated, although I could be wrong…just doesn’t seem completely natural.
4) ARTISTIC QUALITIES. This composition seems to be mainly about shape and texture. You have two main textures formed by the aging shingles–one texture type can be seen on the main, steeper part of the roof, and the other texture can be seen both at the bottom of the image and on the smaller roof just above the window. The window itself rhymes the generally squarish shapes of all the roof shingles. The one thing that hits you right away in this photograph is that it completely breaks with that “guideline” (not “Rule”!) that says one should never center the subject in the frame. It is clear in this case that this was done on purpose and was not simply through ignorance and I think it works well enough. The end result of all this the squareness along with the centered subject is to ground the image quite firmly with no real visual tension anywhere. The horizontal colored beam adds even more static weight. Artistically, I wish there were more going on in this picture, though. It is somewhat interesting as a study of shape and texture, and the pattern of frost on the window is mildly interesting, as well as the very worn-out nature of the building–the roof does have some character. But, it seems as though the stage has been set for something but the actor has not appeared. Can you imagine, for example, this same image with the faint shape of a human form or face in the window? Or, maybe a couple embracing, their faint outlines just visible through the window? Or, maybe a dog or cat staring wistfully out of the frosty glass pane? Or, perhaps a raven perched on the windowsill? You get the idea–anything like that would have added much more interest to the photograph and implied a much stronger story. At least there is the added element of snow, which makes the image slightly more interesting and moody than it otherwise would have been.
5. POSITIVE POINTS. I like the simple composition that breaks the “rules” by centering the main subject. I like the snow, the very weather-beaten look of the shingles and building, and the repetition of the different textures and shapes. I also like the splash of color added across the top of the window.
6. IMPROVE. As I said in #4 above, I think the stage has been set in a very nice way with an elegantly simple composition–but it lacks a truly compelling story. Maybe if the photographer could have waited to see someone appear in the window–or even if she could have knocked on the door and asked someone to pose in the window (!), that would have added tremendously to the power of the photograph. This is a very common failing of many photographs–the stage is set quite nicely, but the actor or actors have failed to appear and thus the image falls a bit flat.
7. OVERALL. This is a somewhat interesting architectural/street/travel image, but it lacks a compelling story. It could possibly work within a collection of images about this particular town, perhaps, but as a stand-alone photograph I’ll call it average.
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