Spirit of Light

moody and dark it is! brooding anger. or maybe a bison's zen moment. could go either way but nothing in between.

Outstanding image!! Only thing that might make it better is if the bisons head was just a bit more towards the camera. Thanks for sharing.

A fiercely brooding image. It is hard to tell which way the bison is pointing. It could easily be pointed toward as well as away from the viewer. However, this image is about spirit and light, not stance.

Beautiful mood captured here, Ian. Could you please post a larger image as well to appreciate this wonderful picture even more?

Hi Ian,

There's a nice feeling to this image - the lighting is quite dramatic.

A bit challenging to offer a critique at this size...as an example there appears to be some digital artifacts (in this case haloing) around the horn and portions of the face that look - at first glance - to be a function of over-sharpening. But I could be dead wrong on this...but impossible to judge at this size. But overall this image has a nice "gestalt" to it and technical details aren't always important...

Cheers...thanks for sharing this...

Brad

Picyune critiques about minor jpeg compression and web sharpening artifacts are kinda missing the point in my opinion . . .

Hi Ian,

I definitely agree - which is why I said "...overall this image has a nice "gestalt" to it and technical details aren't always important... "

It's my opinion that any photograph is an amalgam of both technical and creative components and few images are so strong in any one of these components that the other can be totally ignored. In this case the perceived artifacts were at the absolute centre of interest in the image. Thus they had an impact on my appreciation of this excellent image.

Absolutely no offense intended - just commenting honestly (and hopefully fairly) on what I saw...

Cheers....have a good weekend...

Brad

I didn't take any offense Brad - I just don't see much use in talking about what are at the end of the day very minor, and often unavoidable, problems resulting from reducing images to web size. As I said, it seems to me to be missing the whole point, and it's got nothing to do with an image's "technicals." Critiques should be about composition, light, mood, and real camera technicals (such as whether a shot is in focus or not) - not about whether a curved line in a high contrast area shows some minor artifacts when compressed to web size . . .

Ian,

I disagree with you but this is not the appropriate place to debate this point - you have no email link here so I can't initiate off-line contact. Feel free to email me if you care to continue this - tho' I see absolutely no point in doing so. It's my view that how an image is presented electronically is part of the total equation for a modern photographer, and there should be no problem avoiding oversharpening and/or JPEG compression issues on an image this size with a 300 kb limit. But I don't EVEN KNOW if this IS over-sharpened or suffering from JPEG compression - all I said was that this image was too small to make those judgements on and gave an example of what I meant. I'm fine with however you choose to critique an image...but I don't think your standards should be imposed on anyone else. Comments about over-sharpening and/or JPEG compression are common in this and other NPN galleries (and certainly not just by me) and they DO serve a useful purpose for those receptive to feedback.

Thanks very much...over and out...cheers...

Brad

I'm not imposing my critique standards on anyone, I'm just offering my opinion, which might be a dissenting one, but that shouldn't matter. I think we can both agree that critique should be a two-way street - people should feel free to be able to express themselves when they don't agree with a critique or they wish to clarify something. There's no reason to take this offline, we have two different points of view and we are freely discussing them - there's nothing wrong with that - in fact, isn't that the whole point of a photo sharing forum?

I guess we can just agree to disagree at this point. Personally, I have more pressing things to do: it's past noon so I need to start drinking NOW or I'll be behind for the rest of the day.

Ian, Ian, Ian...this is seriously awesome! I too would like to see a larger image, but the smaller looks amazing! Well done!

Ian,
Cool Capture no matter how you look at it and I looked at it once before and again after a cold beer, it was good both ways.

Very very interesting frame ! I like the dark (low key) mood here and back light is wonderful.If this was mine,
I would prefer to darken (if not clone out) what I believe is a branch of the tree, right on the back of Bison.
Jagdeep Rajput

Superb! Love the light and mysterious mood the dark scene provides. A real wall hanger!