A new series starts with this one, "The city of Milan". I was there for vacations some years ago in the early early spring, and at that time I was making some of my first steps in photography. (With my stolen T70 - sigh!) It was the time when I still was too enthusiastic for close-ups and quite "partial" captures of scenes. But it was then when I also did the first steps towards wider angles especially for the streets. The weather was most of the time cloudy and the lower light conditions made many of the images enhance those earthy tones of many buildings.
The cemetery of the city looked much like a monument for the dead - I never saw such a cult before. Each and everybody, people that never did anything special in their lives were presented much like famous personalituies that changed the world - or similar. Many families have built almost mausoleums for their dead there. And this kind of mania for the monumental without a cause just had to hit me. This is the intention behind this one. We seem to have more respect in front of the dead than in front of the living - what a cult!
I guess that the huge dynamics range made my life hard on this one, and there is both overexposed and underexposed regions. Still it gives me a good impression of the many statues and monuments for the dead. I guess also that some enhancement of depth could have done good here.
Thanks a lot for your time and the suggestion, Linda, that indeed enhanced the integrity - the tightness - of the image. I don't think that the left part is really missed very much. Only the impression of passing them by and moving to some direction is somehow weaker on your crop, but this tightens it further.
Now the question is of course what is the sense of it? Center the sight around the statues and make them as important as it can get, or stay at the passing by - the action - as they "don't take a notice"? I think that your crop does contain both. Which brings the conclusion that I get a bit closer and leave a good part of the darker region at the left out of the image!
Sorry about your stolen T70 Nick...what I like about this image is the strong contrasts of light and dark between the columns...and the play of light and shadow inside, and yes those warm earthy tones!! Very nice...:) And an interesting about too.
I don't know my only thoughts are to perhaps crop an inch off of the left side, (see attached). I don't know, do you think it takes away from those wonderful long shadows? I think it's a it stronger this way, what do you think?
A little dark on the sides, but I like the shadows, reflections and composition, Nick! This is a shot where there are always tradeoffs in exposure with such a large difference in lighting in the scene. Dave.
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