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Fun with MF images 2025

mristuccia

mristuccia

Well-known member
Ed Hurst said:
Victoria's 'Great Ocean Road' is full of beautiful places, evoking Australia's history - stretching back millenia but also during the more recent history since European colonisation. One place that people flock to is the so-called Twelve Apostles - a series of beautiful rock stacks (though there have never been twelve of them - it's mere branding!). You can see them from a popular scenic lookout, but access to the beach itself is blocked off there to provide a wild, natural landscape for the local wildlife and ecosystem. Probably a good thing, as you'd have many thousands of people a day wrecking things.

Alongside an adjacent beach, however, you can climb down and get a pretty close view of some similar (though less numerous) rocks. This is Gibsons Beach, with the two formations called Gog and Magog (those of a Biblical leaning will tell you why, I am sure). It's a remarkable sight.

Now, I'd like to ask you all for some wise counsel. Here's the simple image. I love the power of the scene. The combination of the timeless cosmos, the ancient rocks showing the passage of time through their erosion, and the waves showing a more immediate sense of movement and time. But these huge rocks don't have anything to give them scale; they could almost be boulders. Believe me, they are very large! So something is lacking perhaps.

StarTrailsFromFiles_DSF7827-7997_DxO_Step10CropSMALL by Ed Hurst, on Flickr

So I have a version with a human figure for scale. I like the stronger impression of the rocks' size, but the person detracts perhaps from the simplicity and makes it feel more contrived. So which do you prefer? And if you like the idea of a comparator for scale, but dislike the figure, what would you add instead?

StarTrailsFromFiles_DSF7827-7997_DxO_Version3_Step12sRGBSMALL by Ed Hurst, on Flickr

Both images shot with Fuji GFX100S and Pentax 645 28-45mm lens at circa 29mm. Light from the moon.
Click to expand...
To me, the two versions communicate two different messages.
The one without the person is an absolute. The subject is mother nature and we, the final viewers, are the spectators.
The one with a person looses its absolute status. The person becomes the subject and we try to see through him, wondering what he is thinking about the landscape in front of him. The person acts as a filter and everything becomes relative.

I very much prefer the first version.
 
drunkenspyder

drunkenspyder

Well-known member
I’m also a fan of version 1, but I have an aversion to humans “placed” in landscapes, so take that preference with a grain of salt.😉
 
J

jng

Well-known member
Lovely image(s), Ed. I also prefer version one, not so much because I object to a human included for scale, but because of perspective: the size and placement of the figure draws my eye toward the foreground more than it provides scale (and it's pretty big, too). I think a (smaller- appearing) human standing closer to the stacks might be interesting...

John
 
P

Pieter 12

Well-known member
drunkenspyder said:
I’m also a fan of version 1, but I have an aversion to humans “placed” in landscapes, so take that preference with a grain of salt.😉
Click to expand...
I actually prefer a human presence in landscapes. It makes them less sterile. However, I would hesitate to call those photos landscapes, for me the subject is the star trails.
 
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