By Cliff Samson.
The colour says it all. The vibrant red against a dark brooding sky epitomises the drama of this iconic Tasmanian landscape.
Bay of Fires, by Cliff Samson
Olympus OM-D E-M1; 12-40mm lens; 8.0s; f/8; 31mm
Bay of Fires, Tasmania
The colour says it all. The vibrant red against a dark brooding sky epitomises the drama of this iconic Tasmanian landscape.
Don’s response
Photographer Cliff Samson is certainly right about the central importance of the vivid orange lichen for which this Tasmanian bay is famous.
Apart from offering a dramatic counterpoint to the rocks, the overcast conditions also ensure that the light is even and not too contrasty, so that colour really lights up. As so often happens with landscape photography, a balance has to be struck between the setting on the one hand and the ‘subject’ (in this case those fiery rocks).
To my eye, Cliff has given fairly even weighting to both surrounds and subject. It would be intriguing to see what he could have come up with had he wanted to really put the compositional spotlight on his primary subject by making the contrast between the plain stone and the bright lichen the ‘story’.
