Critique: “Atmospheric” ZOOM

Mon. September 23: “Atmospheric”

Submission Deadline: Tuesday Sep. 17th, 5PM’

ZOOM Meeting

Atmospheric images have specific moods. They are not just “captures”, but instead are images that make you feel how the photographer wants you to feel. Atmospheric photography can employ mist, fog, or the incredible range of emotive, ambient light – soft, harsh, warm, cold, indirect, top light, reflected, shadowy, light, and more. Long exposures that portray an illusion of “time passing” in a still image, or photographs of clouds, waves, and objects interacting with light can be “atmospheric”, as we’ll as images with qualities of softening lines, graduating light transitions, and pronounced sense of depth. Alfred Stieglitz, one of American’s iconic early photographers, described atmospheric qualities in an photograph as follows, evoking the effect of tone:“Atmosphere is the medium through which we see all things. In order, therefore, to see them in their true value on a photograph, as we do in Nature, atmosphere must be there. Atmosphere softens all lines; it graduates the transition from light to shade; it is essential to the reproduction of the sense of distance. That dimness of outline which is characteristic for distant objects is due to atmosphere. Now, what atmosphere is to Nature, tone is to a picture.”
– Alfred Stieglitz, 1864-1946