This competition was a themed digital image competition that replaced the season’s Clive Harrison Trophy. The theme for the evening was “Reflections in water”. The titles of the submitted images were not made available to the judge.
Evening in Molde
Drafting this post I discovered that this image is not of Molde but is actually Svolvaer from Day 3 of our Coastal Voyage going South down the coast of Norway on a Hurtigruten ship.
Judge’s comments
There is a richness of colour which I appreciate . I don’t know where it is, it has that sort of Scandinavian look about it. So it is [probably] somewhere up in the Artic circle with the red houses. […]It has a richness and that is caused by the colour palette that you’ve used. Lovely saturated reds, you’ve got this lovely saturated blue of the water, the sky is a sort of a disappointment, the sky is a bit ‘wishy-washey’ here at the top and with no clouds in it at all the picture really finishes at the top of those X of the structure at the crest of the mountains.
But there is no doubt about the attractiveness of those buildings and of the reflection in the water.
The sky above the mountains, I think, is adding very little to the picture, you may have thought that you needed to leave it in because you didn’t want to cut of the top of the flagpole but nevertheless I appreciate the centre of the picture, I like it a lot.
Passing downtown
This was one of the many images that I shot as Sapphire Princess sailed out of New York.
Judge’s comments
Now is not my role in this particular event to decide if a picture should or should not be in the competition, [] if one image came close to not being qualified for the competition then it would be this one! In so much as it is a usual picture of the city at night , the reflection of the picture on the surface of the water doesn’t add a great deal other than a bright area. Rather than what we are considering in most of the pictures to be an image. However, it is reflection on water of the light from the city.
Now about the picture itself, I think the photograph is interesting, I think your balance between the detail of the city and the amount or area of water that you have shot – we don’t need as much water as that. Particularly with that lovely highlight boat on the water, you could come a lot closer to that boat without loosing the importance of the detail that you’ve captured .
It is not easy to take pictures of buildings at night like this and it is always said that it is better to do it at a point just after the sun has set, so there is still light in the sky.
Here there is still light in the sky but there is no cloud in there, so we have got no detail in the sky. So it isn’t a solid black but the fact that it isn’t completely dark isn’t helped by the fact that there is nothing to see in the sky at all.
But the other aspect of taking these picture of illuminated buildings at night is that you can get a lot of flare from the lit windows but in your case here you’ve got your exposure spot on because there is no flare coming out and the details of the frames of the windows is well exposed and well held.
As a shot of the city I think it is successful.
The original images
‘Evening in Molde’:
‘Passing downtown’:
