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_Psyke on Red Duster
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This is my old mate _Psyclone climbing Red Duster at Kinnego Bay Donegal.
Comments and edits welcome.*edit* – Should have said that the head at the bottom is Geoff’s!
Pete,
I have to say that I would be a little concerned about being belayed by a little football shaped head.
Fair play to young psycho for his bravery.Nice rocks by the way. We must get down to this spot next year for some proper hardcore landscaping. Grrrr. None of your pansy rock climbing photography mind.
I hope this post doesn’t put off some real critiques. Come on folks, Pete told me to post this critique because he thought that none of you had the guts to critique his hardcore climbing shot.
Andy
Oh Andy, Andy. I told you to say it was a great shot. You weren’t supposed to let on that I put you up to it.
Pete, that is a great shot! …….thats what you told me to say too, wasnt it….. erm…wasnt it?
Pete,
Deputy Carl and I think it’s a great shot.
hang on a sec…. what’s this… a bendy little horizon?
It’s hard to see so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t suppose those soft sports photographers would notice anyway. If this was posted in the landscape photography section I would have flogged you and sent you to bed with no supper.
Andy
As this is meant to be a critique forum and not a ‘great shot’ forum :) , I thought that I better add some critique.
It doesnt really do it for me as a sports shot. Looking down from a height on the climber isn’t the ideal position to take the photograph from
in my opinion. It would have been better along side him, ie closer.Seems to be a cross between a landscape image and a sports image but not really one or the other if you know what I mean.
Ed
Well said Ed,
I was thinking the same myself but I didn’t want to make Pete cry. If you ask me, Pete should concentrate on his hardcore landscape photography and forget all about that soft sports photography nonsense.
Pete, did you take this from the mountain resuce helecopter? You are very high up in the sky it seems. Perhaps you could ask the pilot to decend into the valley to get some action shots focusing squarely on the climbers shapely arse.
Andy
As any climbing photographer knows, you can end up with a lot of foreshortened cliffs and climbers’ bums if you aren’t careful. The idea is to try to tell the story: either by showing the climb or the climber. In this case it’s the climb – a lovely setting, a vertical cliff, a delicate crack system and a climber just setting off on his journey.
When you focus in on the climber, you lose all the perspective i.e. you can’t see what he’s climbing, so then you have to try and get his expression or his body position to tell the story.
This is a landscape as much as a climbing shot, I suppose.
There’s no horizon…. I cropped it out because it was a bit skewy – maybe 0.5 degrees out!
Here goes,
First off I get the feeling you were standing up on top of a cliff type thingy. Lie down if possible to lower your viewpoint for this shot anyway. Better again, assuming Mr. Climber didn’t slip and crack himself open, he would have climbed higher and it would have looked more dramatic. The further the drop, the more dramatic the climbing shot.
You also seemed to take the photo at a very static moment. The guy is looking around for holds and is standing comfortable and square. Wait until he is at least reaching for a hold but preferably contorted on the climb, balancing on one foot with fingers grasping for a tiny hold. It also helps if the climber is looking towards you (just with the position you are in) but climbing photography is poxy hard to show real grit and drama in at the best of times.
The bags in the foreground make the bottom of the frame look a bit messy.
the grass just at the foreground (at your feet) looses some of the sense of danger of the shot too. Stark rock may look better.
It may also look better if the guy is a couple of metres above his last piece of gear!
How much higher above your photo did the climb go? If it went up much, I would preferably show more of that than the grass and ropes on the ground!
Good setting for climbing pics.
That’s all folks :)
Pete,
I think you are getting mixed up between “bags of foreground” and “bags in the foreground”
You could try and get bags of bags in the foreground. That would probably work better.Apart from that I would agree 100% with PaulG. I think the only thing that PaulG has missed is the fact that this was really the only place possible to stand when Psycho is climbing. Anywhere else would be highly dangerous.
Andy
OK. Here’s another attempt.
For a photographer to suggest that a climber run out above his last gear placement would be impudent in the extreme – it’s not the guy with the camera who may die.
PeteTheBloke wrote:
OK. Here’s another attempt.
For a photographer to suggest that a climber run out above his last gear placement would be impudent in the extreme – it’s not the guy with the camera who may die.
That may be so, but as I am a climber I guess I am allowed to say it!
No one is asking him to solo.
I wasn’t saying not to put in gear, I meant the point at which you took the photo should be a bit beyond the last gear placement.
Anyway, I prefer your second shot.
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