Revisiting an old friend

Funny how sometimes a photo I take is a favourite with me but almost no one else. Here’s one taken at Coles Bay early this year which I was happy with. However, when I put it up in a Facebook album, with a selection of other pictures taken this year, and asked everyone to like their favourites, this one got very few votes. I wonder why? Can I look at this photo objectively?

Hazards Silhouette

First I guess I should say what I was trying to do here. I really like the way that long exposure photos can simplify a scene and let you highlight the stationary bits. Also the silhouette of The Hazards is such a Tasmanian icon. It's fun to play with time.  So to keep things simple I chose a composition with nothing but sea in the foreground. The sky was pretty clear too, so the only thing left was the skyline.

So maybe where this photo fails is that it lacks interest. Many successful landscape photos have a foreground element that leads the viewer's eye into the scene. There's obviously nothing here to do that so other elements of the image need to be strong. In this case that has to be the skyline as there isn't anything else!

It could be that the thing to do here is try black and white and play around with the sky a bit. Obviously the result isn't going to be how it looked 'live' but the idea here, I think, is to give a feeling for the place and emphasise the iconic shape of the landscape.

So I think I'll have another go at this one. Stay tuned...