The Collective Eye No. 3

In this weeks image, the photographer wanted to capture a warm summer feeling out on Lake Constance, a quick snapshot taken from the boat in the moment, nothing planned or staged.

The following comments are direct quotes from our community, shared exactly as they were written. We're publishing them as a way of showing the range of honest, thoughtful feedback this image received, not as a final verdict, but as a real conversation between photographers looking closely at the same frame.

“I would cut out a lot of the negative space to the right out of the image and close in on the other boat, while framing with the one the photographer was on.”

“The photo is successful in capturing the experience in the moment. Showing portions of the foreground boat adds to the candid feeling and doesn’t distract, except for the objects in the upper right corner, which could be cloned or cropped out. Shooting into the sun with a bright blue sky is difficult to pull off in black & white, and overall could benefit from some contrast. The background might be helped by dodging to brighten the horizon. Overall considering the photographers intent, a nice image.”

“Personally I would go for portrait orientation and then crop in this case and focus on the left side of this landscape frame. I love the specular highlights from the water definitely a summery cue. I would maybe try to place the sun behind the strut to get some interesting sunstar effect or place it outside the frame and try to catch maybe some flare. It is not easy to convey summer without color but this would be the decision if I had to go there.”

“To my mind the picture is too much grey and too little black and white, so to me it lacks something to take a longer look at. Maybe that would have worked better, if the boat were bigger or the surrounding were cropped a bit.”

“I think it's a very well executed and also well composed photo! Perhaps the clouds distract from the overall minimalistic effect a bit but it's still excellent to me.”

“This is a nice image. I love the diagonal lines and using the boat to frame the subject and give some context is great. For me there is some tension between the sun flare and the diagonal line from the boat awning. The diagonal line leads your eye toward the boat which is perfect but the sun flare seems to pull it away from the intended target. Maybe a slight shift in the photographers perspective to allow more spacing between the sun and diagonal line would have been good.”