2 dimensional image

Is it me or has the bird photos become 2 dimensional only, much like plant plates dried in a book.  That is a style but it is not the only way to take bird photos; I would love to see some life in the gallery. 

Mike in O wrote:Is it me or has the bird photos become 2 dimensional only, much like plant plates dried in a book.  That is a style but it is not the only way to take bird photos; I would love to see some life in the gallery. 

Hey Mike, looking forward to seeing you post one.

Alan, I've posted a few...but I am not into set pieces

It must be you! Shooting 3-dimensional images is always much easier in landscapes, botanical etc. But for wildlife photography can be much harder especially for birds! Putting birds/animals in their environment a photographer can create a 3-dimensional image as long as the critter doesn't move to allow greater DOF and the environment they are in will be subject to 3-dimensional! Doing close-ups of birds/animals will almost always be 2 dimensional! I look at the Avian gallery all the time and maybe most are 2-dimensional but they are fantastic images!

No doubt, there are some great images in the bird gallery...just look at Alan's Caracara shot, that is what I meant by a 3d shot, there is life in that shot.

Mike in O wrote:...just look at Alan's Caracara shot, that is what I meant by a 3d shot, there is life in that shot.

Now I'm confused.

I see a lot of avian with good perspective (3 dimensionality) in them. So I respectfully disagree with the OP on this. I see feeding birds, predatory birds with prey in their beaks, birds in mid wing flap, etc. - really too numerous to identify each one. I also see plenty of perched bird shots that are good shots but may lack as much perspective and 'wowza' as the best - but are still plenty good images. 

Perhaps this comes from the Art Morris school of bird photography: point your shadow at the subject. If the sun is very close to behind you, there is little shading on the subject. Shading gives form. A good example is on camera flash produces flat portraits of people and other subjects so many move the flash off camera. Same with the sun. If it is directly (or almost directly) behind you the subject will appear flat.

Here are some examples from my perspective from the bird forum:

This eagle image looks very 3D to me, where the sun is over the right shoulder about 30 degrees:
http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/view ... 3&t=251572

Backlit makes this image look 3D:
http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/view ... 3&t=252610

And for comparison, here is a very flat image:
http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/view ... 3&t=253018

But note, even a flat image can be beautiful, especially colorful birds. Though a matter of taste, I prefer to work off the sun angle about 20 to 30 degrees or backlit.

The angle of light is called the phase angle, and I have a series about the angle of light. Note that not only does the angle of light make the macro shadows that gives form, it also makes micro shadows that give texture. Examples on this page in the middle of the series:
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/lighting.part4/

Roger

rnclark wrote:Perhaps this comes from the Art Morris school of bird photography: point your shadow at the subject.  If the sun is very close to behind you, there is little shading on the subject.  Shading gives form.  A good example is on camera flash produces flat portraits of people and other subjects so many move the flash off camera.  Same with the sun.  If it is directly (or almost directly) behind you the subject will appear flat.

Here are some examples from my perspective from the bird forum:

This eagle image looks very 3D to me, where the sun is over the right shoulder about 30 degrees:
http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/view ... 3&t=251572

Backlit makes this image look 3D:
http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/view ... 3&t=252610

And for comparison, here is a very flat image:
http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/view ... 3&t=253018

But note, even a flat image can be beautiful, especially colorful birds.  Though a matter of taste, I prefer to work off the sun angle about 20 to 30 degrees or backlit.

The angle of light is called the phase angle, and I have a series about the angle of light.  Note that not only does the angle of light make the macro shadows that gives form, it also makes micro shadows that give texture.  Examples on this page in the middle of the series:
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/lighting.part4/

Roger

My apologies in advance.       Roger.   Your points were sublime.  Nailed.  Excellent examples and really enjoyed them:  (john's BE a superb example).   200% agree.  Then you did a Roger on us.   I'm ok with the early links.  Nice... 

seriously.   am comfortable with your points although I'm not sure Art will like the label.  

Roger, I think you got my point, lots of 2D are very good, but it seems like many people in the forum demand the same look (editor choices for example). My other pet peeve is slowing water down to look like cotton, nothing wrong with it but it has become de rigueur to do it with all flowing water. I know these styles are not going away but diversity is the spice of life.

Roger your linked article was very informative and served to put into words something I had intuited a good many years ago. The diagrams where great for seeing what the various angles did.

Mike you did everyone a service by stirring up the status quo. Yes, most of us are playing follow the leader and as Roger made point, the indoctrinated theory of blurring the background and point your shadow at your subject has come, reigned king, and is done. Sure if one wants a nice pic.... fine...there ya go... there's your formula. If on the other hand one wants an image that eternally evokes power then one needs to understand composition of the next level. By ELIMINATING your background you are essentially working two out of eight possible cylinders ...you  will only get so far. I made this point repeatedly years ago and was rebuffed for the most part, yet now we all are seeing the end to hobbled composition. That Background should be the most important part of an image without the viewer even knowing it, and should support and augment the main subject at the same time as creating the illusion of 3D..... and that my friends is how we all see the world. 2D is nice, 3D gabs hold of one viscerally and does not let go.

Again I reference the best book on composition I have ever found. "Composition in Art" by Henry Rankin Poole. It utilizes the works of the masters and puts it to the reader in the most simplest terms possible. It boils composition down to such an easy level to grasp. It is simple, but, there are many ways to utilize the strategies.

But don't take my  ramblings for the truth...just look how people react when an image that incorporates a strong bg in a big way react overwhelmingly to those images. Background is not something that has little value...in great images the background IS the images strength. It alone sets the table. This nonstop parade of blurry backgrounds is  so old now it's clear most are desiring much more. Those 2D renditions are only a cut above a stiff documentary image and probably only survive as they have that nostalgic feel as if an Audubon painting or something. Many folks are always looking for that delusional get back to the old days tradition nonsense. Why not  take what the old days masters learned and run with it instead in a modern world. It's difficult to get images on a 3D level, way harder than 2D,  so naturally we see more of the 2D stuff. It's way easy with a 5 or 600 to just simply isolate the subject and make him stand out. Visual pop is no where close to emotional grip on any level. Just compare all those eye candy movies you have seen over the years to one's that nailed you to the floor or ascended you to a virtual rebirth of thought and spirit.

An image in 2D is nice, and it's pleasant, and it's documentary, but an image explicitly incorporating the entire compositional palette, and in case anyone is still listening, one that grabs a viewer right in the gut viscerally, pulling out his or her's very sense of humanity, is one that that  a viewer will emboss or etch on their memory forever. Also  if one ever wants to have their images count for something in the battle to save the earths ecosystems, this is what one will need to master.

There's no wrong approach, I'm not saying  that, only better, and then better still, and then "oh my god is this a great image" better !!! The choice is up to the artist in my view... We have done very, very, little here on this site to promote this goal of complete use of composition tools. For whatever that volatile thought may bring down upon my head....

I hope we all get involved discussing this subject Mike brings up. We need it I  think.


Paul

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Paul,
I really enjoyed reading your insightful post above. Thank you for writing that.
______________________________________________________________

I think that there are two ways in which a bird photo can be 2 dimensional, or "flat":

1: The bird and/or perch (prop) has little or no apparent texture. This is a result of being shot at a "flat" phase angle - a.k.a. straight front lighting. Shadow detail is almost completely lacking, causing there to be no visual depth to the bird's plumage.

2: The bird and perch are on the same focal plane, and everything else in the frame is so far from that focal plane that it is completely blurred out. The only recognizable elements on the photo are the bird and whatever vegetation is immediately surrounding it (and possibly other birds and/or the bird's prey - but all on the same focal plane). These elements are all basically the same distance from the camera. The photo is "flat" because only the things at this one distance are recognizable. It is as though the photographer, with a big scene before him, chose to only take one slice out of that scene, and intentionally made everything else "melt away" into nothingness.

Of these two types of two dimensional images, I am not sure which one the OP was referring to when he referred to the photos in our bird galleries being 2 dimensional. But I suspect he meant reason #2, as he used the phrase "much like plant plates dried in a book".

I just took a look at the first page of the current Bird Gallery. Out of the 72 images appearing on that page, 58 of them could be described as "2 dimensional" in one of the two ways I described above. That means that about 4 out of every 5 images could be classified as a 2 dimensional image. Funny thing is, some of these 2-D images would be ones that I consider to be the best ones on the page!

So, I do agree with the OP in that there is an apparent dearth of 3-dimensional bird images - images which have a deep DOF and incorporate a lot of background elements at varying degrees of distance to the camera, hence varying degrees of focus and varying degrees of recognizability. But I also recognize that many of the very best, most compelling bird images do not need to have a lot of recognizable background elements - in such images, the birds themselves are the whole point of the photo, and the bird's beauty and/or behavior is quite capable of giving us that "emotional grip" that P. Leverington spoke of in the previous post.

I think that there is a great deal of merit to each kind of bird image - both 2D and 3D - and I look forward to seeing many of each in the bird gallery!

Part of the reason I started the poll on light preferences was because of the lack of dimension I felt was present in so many photos nowadays. It seems like you see more highly detailed close-ups with no or little detail in the BG, especially of birds but mammals too, than any other type of image. While I like detail, I also prefer a more realistic image as seen in the field with bare eyes. That means a little bit of natural OOF BG. When contrast is so flat with a clean BG, the images look boring to me (my opinion only, of course). As Mike stated about water, I feel the same. I have never seen cottony looking water! Maybe people like the look because it is dreamy, but that does not represent reality. Recently, I found one of my images of a field of sunflowers posted on Facebook (not by me). It was taken under high thin clouds that diffused and cut the light. Most people liked the image, but one of the commenters said that they liked the shot, but that they liked shadows, too. That is how I feel too, as long as they are not harsh shadows from overhead light. When I post an image like this one:

http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/view ... 3&t=253185

the comment I usually get is "You did the best you could with the light you had" or Too bad about the light" or "I would have cloned out the tumbleweed in the water". I like the dimension the light adds. It reminds me of the countless hours looking through a Viewmaster when I was a kid. You could feel like you were a part of a real life scene where the people and animals were really there in front of you and not plates flattened between the pages of a book, as Mike said..

Different strokes definitely!

Joe

I heard it said somewhere, wink. "Light Illuminates, Shadows Define" 

Truthfully, there is no right or wrong preference...as Visual Impact trumps all. 

With wildlife conditions on site most often dictate the lighting. How we make use of the light is what separates one image from the next. 

See you in the field or at the computer,

Chas

pleverington wrote:Mike you did everyone a service by stirring up the status quo. Yes, most of us are playing follow the leader and as Roger made point, the indoctrinated theory of blurring the background and point your shadow at your subject has come, reigned king, and is done. Sure if one wants a nice pic.... fine...there ya go... there's your formula. If on the other hand one wants an image that eternally evokes power then one needs to understand composition of the next level. By ELIMINATING your background you are essentially working two out of eight possible cylinders ...you  will only get so far. I made this point repeatedly years ago and was rebuffed for the most part, yet now we all are seeing the end to hobbled composition. That Background should be the most important part of an image without the viewer even knowing it, and should support and augment the main subject at the same time as creating the illusion of 3D..... and that my friends is how we all see the world. 2D is nice, 3D gabs hold of one viscerally and does not let go.

Again I reference the best book on composition I have ever found. "Composition in Art" by Henry Rankin Poole. It utilizes the works of the masters and puts it to the reader in the most simplest terms possible. It boils composition down to such an easy level to grasp. It is simple, but, there are many ways to utilize the strategies.

But don't take my  ramblings for the truth...just look how people react when an image that incorporates a strong bg in a big way react overwhelmingly to those images. Background is not something that has little value...in great images the background IS the images strength. It alone sets the table. This nonstop parade of blurry backgrounds is  so old now it's clear most are desiring much more. Those 2D renditions are only a cut above a stiff documentary image and probably only survive as they have that nostalgic feel as if an Audubon painting or something. Many folks are always looking for that delusional get back to the old days tradition nonsense. Why not  take what the old days masters learned and run with it instead in a modern world. It's difficult to get images on a 3D level, way harder than 2D,  so naturally we see more of the 2D stuff. It's way easy with a 5 or 600 to just simply isolate the subject and make him stand out. Visual pop is no where close to emotional grip on any level. Just compare all those eye candy movies you have seen over the years to one's that nailed you to the floor or ascended you to a virtual rebirth of thought and spirit.

An image in 2D is nice, and it's pleasant, and it's documentary, but an image explicitly incorporating the entire compositional palette, and in case anyone is still listening, one that grabs a viewer right in the gut viscerally, pulling out his or her's very sense of humanity, is one that that  a viewer will emboss or etch on their memory forever. Also  if one ever wants to have their images count for something in the battle to save the earths ecosystems, this is what one will need to master.

There's no wrong approach, I'm not saying  that, only better, and then better still, and then "oh my god is this a great image" better !!! The choice is up to the artist in my view... We have done very, very, little here on this site to promote this goal of complete use of composition tools. For whatever that volatile thought may bring down upon my head....

I hope we all get involved discussing this subject Mike brings up. We need it I  think.


Paul

Paul:  Is that Henry Rankin Poore?    HCarl

I have been really impressed with the thoughtful comments on this subject, much more articulate than I could ever hope to be.

Opps...my bad..your correct Hcarl it's Poore. The book has been around a long time, but is still a go to for artists(painters). From the basics one can spring board to other concepts and newer trends more easily if desired. In the case of this discussion on 2D and 3D, just the following one example of comp technique will yield tremendous results.

It's important to understand how to balance an image on the axis that extends back into the picture helps create the 3D effect on a 2D media, as we all are having to work with.  Balance in any image is one's starting point period, so this is a primary concept. Most of the time the artist easily sees and easily understands the need for balance between the left and right, and top and bottom in an image to be paramount, but the forward to aft balance, if poorly neglected, will kill the ability of the comp elements to draw the viewer in.  After all that's the end goal and why 3D is way more powerful. With the 2D image, a viewer looks at the image and can certainly  enjoy what he or she sees. It's a pleasant visual experience. With proper use of comp principles however, working together to create a 3d image, a very different interpretation by the viewer is realized. That viewer will be drawn into the image as if they were there. The mind takes over at this point and "creates" to fill in the blanks by evoking stimulating sensory reactions and feelings from memory...the mind fills in the blanks. It's all in the mind, for however long it  happens, and the viewer may perceive they actually smell the the fresh spring air, hear the birds singing, feel the sunshine on their face, or maybe the awakening positive ions of an impending thunderstorm bathing their naked bodies, or the fragrance of freshly fallen autumn leaves, or the taste of a kiss.........The sky is the limit for the artist as to what emotions and sensations he or she would like to evoke within the viewer. But within that viewers memory, all these things of the mind reside and will be recalled to help define  and shape what the visual initiates . The more of the senses that are stimulated, the more entranced the viewer becomes. It's a communication, a bond created, a sharing at the visceral level between human beings that "art" is. But if the viewer never enters the image, none of this happens. And it's an illusion to be sure, but none the less it feels real, and oh boy what an illusion!!. You'll know when you have achieved this when folks keep looking at your work and seem rather transfixed....oblivious to their surroundings. This is the artists highest reward. That and getting paid. But then there again, there are images that people buy because the colors go with the drapes, and then there are people who buy images because they can't wait to be swept up again and taken somewhere that gives them something, takes them out of themselves, engages their imaginations, touches their feelings and maybe their very spirits.

Seriously...

I  know in the field we take what is given, but without the knowledge of what  to look for, one is hobbled to not  seeing the possible. An example would be do you seek the bird or do you seek the background to wait out what subject may enter? Do you wait to get  lucky? When one sees a great image it's a wonderful moment, but can one see around the  corner as to  what  could be only if......

Plus with birds anyways and some other  animals one can do set ups and here there are not hardly any limitations. But of course one would have to work that old imagination and really put some effort into it.


I'm looking at Chas's mantra  "Light Illuminates, Shadows Define" and this is about balance also. Using one to counter the other in whatever dance the artist  wishes to go to...guess I'm thinking to visualize some of these principles in such perspectives leaves the cognitive mind behind and  lets free the creative spirit within...


Paul