During the winter months, the Pacific Northwest is full of flat, grey light. I find it difficult to photograph something that fits what I’m feeling these days. With a little help from Lightroom and Photoshop, I think this comes closer to expressing what I want to say. I am interested to hear your interpretation of this image so please feel free to leave something in the comments below. However this is one post where I won’t include any response to your comments–at least not for now.
Beautiful clouds. The tone certainly conveys your description of the PNW in winter. As to your mood, based of the image, I would say you’ve been feeling flat, blah, and disconnected (isolated) from the natural world; possibly your creativity. That last one might be a stretch but the image has an isolated or drained feel to it. As much as I love winter, I’m reaching the point I do every winter when my creativeness with what winter offers is running out.
I see in this image vast open spaces portraying how we can feel about life at times. The gray ominous clouds give the feeling a storm has pasted or is approaching. So your post-processing has the feeling of the stormy times in life and the vastness of our life, that we all face. I also like the one lone pylon which suggests the feeling of solitude and aloneness.
I do hope you have a wonderful weekend. Hugs, my friend!
I find it interesting to hear photographers talk about the lack of creativity in the winter months. I find some my strongest work comes from the winter months. Overcast grey days are just full of opportunity for monochromatic exploration. I do think the color of your image sets a wonderful tone and mood for your composition. I agree with Monte about the single pylon, it’s a sense of solitude, but I think of it more as an inner peace than aloneness. I know you have been questioning yourself lately, and I think some of the struggles you are facing do show in this photograph.
The hardest part about being a creative is thinking it’s always going to be there. I’ve had my own set of ups and downs lately and the one thing that helps is exactly what you’ve done: go out into the world and explore with your camera. Thanks for sharing Sabrina
-Travis
I think this photograph is beautiful, and that I hope and pray is how might feel. How the water meets the sky at the horizon and melds one to the other in color and form is wonderful. Seeing the beauty in our images is seeing the beauty in ourselves!
Gorgeous image. I see the break in the clouds as the calm after the storm – the light at the end of the tunnel. The pylon feels like a guide-post, something to keep the wandering traveler on the right path, out into the eventual sunlight.
Beautiful. Put it on canvas and sell the heck out of it!
I like the single color idea. Did you try black and white with even more contrast?
It’s depressing. I am getting down just looking at it. I gotta go before I slit my wrists!
I know I said I wasn’t going to respond to any comments on this post but Chris, I can’t let this one go! Did you forget to include a smiley face at the end of your comment? I sure hope so because I made this photograph right before I met you and Trish for lunch
although I did only process it yesterday.
LOL! Yes, perhaps I should of put a wink on there. You know me. *<|:o)
All comedy aside, the image does invoke a sense of sadness and loneliness to me. It's the hue, clouds, and a sole marker in the water that metaphors these feelings. Maybe there is also a sense of fear of the unknown with the darkness on the right.
Knowing that you had visited your father before our lunch, possibly, it explains why you captured that image and processed it the way you did.
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Having lived most of my life in the Pacific Northwest I find this to be a nice representation of a typical winter day up there. I think it’s a fine photo and sets the mood you were going for.
I especially like the ripples and reflection of the light tower…gives me a focal point for visual reference.
Since you said that the treatment in Lightroom and Photoshop helped you convey your feeling into it, I’d say you’re feeling blue. Without that clue though, I’d say the image conveys steerlessness. No direction, no path. Also, everything is just too smooth, too silent. As if you’re expecting turmoil but don’t know yet from where, or when it will destroy the silence.
I think i have similar feeling about this photograph as Chris, it’s moody even a little depressing, but at the same time all the colors of blue instill in me some tranquility / calmness.
Also i would love to see version with more water in the frame. Maybe, in spite of everything, even one with the horizon right in the middle (but not a pano-like)… for me the vastness of the sky, and those “angry” clouds are somehow conflicting with quiet of the water – this can be good thing or not, depending on what You tried to express…i don’t know
I do know though, that we must be in similar mood this weekend as i took quite similar image in terms of color… (link below)
http://www.radek-kozak.com/blog/2011/01/sunday-impressions-blue-beach/
it’s sunday in the title because it’s sunday already here in Poland
It certainly looks like a moody pacific-northwest day. I like it in monochrome and agree with Chris Ward to give it a try in black and white.
I’ve had this image open on my desktop since soon after you posted it, and it’s been a bit of a challenge to compose a comment. Truth is, this is exactly the kind of image that I love, and don’t want my comment to end up being about me. lol.
So, having given this some thought… it feels like yearning for a distant shore (and the future), obscured by distance and cloud.
This image tells me you are yearning for some time away – perhaps in the sun, holding a margarita…with a little (or a lot) of laughter, likely an adventure or two…oh, and a little photography… how ’bout it my friend? Have I convinced you yet?
ps. the image is beautiful. I love the simplicity of it.
Sabrina, such a somber photo. I hope you are not as blue as this image. It is very striking and certainly conveys the winter feeling. It can be sook hard to ge tout and creat on days like these so, well done for getting out there and shooting.
This to me, is a quiet, intimate image that evokes sensations of sitting by the beach alone as a kid, with no thought of daily pressures, never-ending to do lists, anxieties about the future, regrets about the past etc.
This to me, is a picture of how I might feel at the end of a long, solitary nightwalk, when the sun is just breaking the day, and I am alone out there, with all the time in the world and nothing else to do but just be.
Life is like a blank open canvas and you may now start painting the picture you want for the future
beautiful and intriguing image, Sabrina.
It seems vast and uncertain. ..is there a storm? ..brewing or subsiding? The added color brings a sense of depth and peacefulness despite uncertainty.
Is this a contest? ..if so, I vote for Krista – sunshine and margaritas, photography and adventure!
Sabrina, this one I feel in different ways depending on MY mood. My first impression was of such space and serenity. With a different mood and a different perspective the clouds stood out to me more and felt more oppressive. But overall, I still have a feeling that there is space here for the soul to expand.