In The Antarctic Peninsula

[stubbsy]

I've finally found some time to process some of my remaining shots from my trip to Antarctica last November. Here are some taken in and around Cuverville Island in the Antarctic Peninsula and on which I'd like critique. No need to be gentle

As a side note - white balance is a real challenge in such an environment - nothing is actually white - it's all shades of blue or cyan or green. To assist I used a ColorChecker Passport for a lot of my shots and it worked a treat.











This one is also available is a black and white HERE

[Chaase]

How brilliant is #2,
Amazing!

[biggerry]

How brilliant is #2,

pretty darn brillant ! perfect timing, pefect crop - really gives a sense of the trip and experience. Nicely done with this one Peter.

The first is also very pleasing, the inclusion of the boat makes it - I reckon it would actually be quite hard to capture 'bergs, not from a technical stand poitn but rather from an arty sense and composition. If the first did not have the boat, it would just be another chuck of ice shot.

The third image is nice but lacks real compositional punch, there is some lead into the image and the eye does move around the image in a slightly less disjointed way but I think the composition could be better.

The fourth image is nice but lacks a 3d sense to it due to the 'flat' composition, possibly a 3/4 angle on the seal maye have helped (however I acknowledge you probably are quite limited in positions in these kind of situations)

[aim54x]

Put simply....BLOODY AMAZING!!

Peter, why have you been hiding all of these from us?

[CraigVTR]

Awersome. The B&W of the seal adds a bit of depth because of the better contrast in the clouds.
#2, brilliant for the same reasons Gerry gave.
#1 ditto
#3 ditto

[radar]

Peter,

the first two are superb, loved them.

#3 doesn't quite work for me. I find the lower left to be a bit OOF and that detracts for me.

#4 would have been nice with the seal looking at you but I know that the option for that was not really there.

I browsed through the rest of your gallery on smugmug and love some of the other photos on there. The two gentoos on the snow interacting are wonderful and the gentoos porpoising in front of the iceberg, love them as well. Fantastic shots. The petrel and the mountains also works beautifully, gives a nice sense of scale and isolation.

cheers,

[stubbsy]

Thank you all for your feedback.

#1 actually bothered me a bit since I was concerned it might lack WOW factor given the tonal range despite the scale of boat vs iceberg.

#2 - I have 10 or so in this sequence as the penguins get closer to the kayakers. For me this one had the best composition, but I must have tried 10 different crops. The challenge is clicking when you think the penguins are about to come back up. I have so many porpoising penguin shots with nothing but tail.

#3 & #4 are interesting comment wise. I spent more time working on these than the others - playing with crops, treatments and the like. I guess that matches the critique on the pair not being as compelling as the others. #4 is a hybrid image in a sense. The ice at the bottom and the seal are a slightly opaque overlay of the B & W version of the image so that just a touch of colour comes through. Guess it didn't work, but that's life.

I browsed through the rest of your gallery on smugmug and love some of the other photos on there. The two gentoos on the snow interacting are wonderful and the gentoos porpoising in front of the iceberg, love them as well. Fantastic shots. The petrel and the mountains also works beautifully, gives a nice sense of scale and isolation.

Thanks

I'm glad you mention the Petrel and the mountains shot. I really like the tonality of the image, but was unsure if it was strong enough to present to the masses as a good sample of my work - I was starting to doubt myself since I really like the shot and the crop. So thanks for that feedback.