Tap Class, 2007

divamum

(At Jeffraux2's urging, I'm trying to be braver and post pix! Learning curve and all that...).

C&C not only welcomed, but sought

This is a photo from last year. I'm kind of setting myself little assignments at the moment, most of which boil down to "How can I make a silk purse out of a sow's ear?"!!

In this case: It know it's not pin sharp, but I kind of liked the lineup of the girls, the window reflections on the marley dance floor, and it amused my that my own daughter had on mismatched socks (we seem to have sock issues pretty regularly in this house . So, my "assignment" to myself was... how can I try to make it work, even with its limitations? Not sure it quite gets there, but it was fun to work on (even if I STILL haven't figured out the "real" way to do the selective colour areas - see my post in the Finishing School forum for details - it was driving me NUTS)

Here's the SOOC original:




And what I've been playing with:


I did a bit of dodging and burning on this one (probably not quite enough - may tinker with it some more)

Darren Troy C

Really like #3 comp! Seeing as there's no other opportunity to color different socks, I think all B&W would look MUCH better....irregardless, nice shot.

Swartzy

I'm actually liking the 3rd best so far. I like the composition here...good crop.

divamum

Thank you both so much! I've been playing with all BW, but somehow it just looked too flat to me (which may, of course, be my ineptness with pp, but since that's why I set myself the exercise, it's good for me to try and make it work!). Normally I'm not really a big fan of the selective colouring thing, but I guess because I know the "story" behind those socks it worked for me; helpful to know that *without* that personal connection to it, it just comes over as a bit random

Swartzy wrote:

I'm actually liking the 3rd best so far. I like the composition here...good crop.

Since both of you said something similar, I have to ask: are you seeing two different crops in 2 and 3? When I first posted, I DID have two different ones there, but then I edited and now it's actually the identical photograph (except that in #3 I did some dodging and burning to lift out the actual taps and darken the shadows)! I'm wondering if perhaps your browsers cached the original post or something....

Here's what I originally posted as #3 which, to avoid confusion, I will call #3a (once I saw it against dgrin's black background I decided that all the noise I added looked silly, so I took it down again :




Here's what's there as #3 now, or #3b:


Which one are you seeing?

In any case, thanks to you both for the feedback - I appreciate you taking the time to comment!

jeffreaux2

Good for you for posting!

I have to admit that selective coloring rarely impresses me, and in this photograph it isn't really grabbing me either. I can understand you wanting to get a grab of your daughter's mix-matched socks though. That definately is an excellent photographic opportunity. You also noticed the reflections of the dancers on the floor...another good opportunity. It seems to me though that you have tried to compose this after the fact. Tilting this way and cropping that way to try to improve on what you origianlly framed up in the camera. For me it doesn't work.
...but...

You did notice in the socks and in the reflections two things that others who are....less than artistically inclined....would have failed to notice. So it seems you have an "eye" for photography even if your skills in composition aren't caught up to that eye. That is something that is in your favor! Anyone who can read can easily learn the technical side of photography and study all of the basic rules of composition, but having an eye to make their technically correct photos something more artistic is beyond their grasp. I think that by seeing these two things, by noticing them and wanting to capture them, that you already have something going for you that is often hard...if ever...learned.

My critique of this photo, and what you were attempting to do is that maybe it should have been two seperate photos alltogether. One, a close in "portrait" of her feet....perhaps up on her toes...or in some position of dance. The other a composition that more thouroughly captured the reflection...with little emphasis on their feet. Maybe their feet in a row like your cropped version, but with the bottom two thirds of the image containing their reflections. I think that since the shot was tilted in its original framing, you had to sacrifice too much of the reflection in straightening it.

"A silk purse from a cow's ear?"...now that's funny....but more often than not...in the case of photography....you may just wind up with a cow's ear in the end. My suggestion is to think through your shots a bit more before you capture them so that they are very close to what your intuition and gut tell you that you want. In other words, get it right in camera...and then fine tune after the fact.

Make sense?

divamum

Jeffraux, you are kind to take the time to give that lengthy response! Much appreciated.

I agree with 1000000% about getting it right IN the camera - this was simply a set I had on the hard disk which I noticed when doing some disk housekeeping, I was stuck at home yesterday, and just decided to play with it to see what I could come up with from what amounted to snapshots. It's 18 months old (just after I got my dSLR, in fact) and the lens was too short to get what I think I wanted at the time, which would have been a telephoto "compression" of the line of feet (at least I'm assuming that's why I even shot them from the waist down - it's back in the mists of time now... So, yeah. What you said

And, in fact, you've given me another idea.... It'll never be a "great" picture, but working on it is an EXCELLENT exercise in developing processing skills to plug away with it... and in the process (oops, bad pun), hopefully teaching myself to spot these details IRL rather than only on the computer months aftereward!

Thanks again - I really appreciate the generosity in guiding a n00b (butt slithering slooowwwlly down the wall, if not entirely off it yet