Don't whip, please suggest, fix, ......

ginger_55

The goal: to best show bridge for subject "New", as in the challenge, so if you don't want to participate that is OK.

I have an exellent subject here and I feel like I am falling short. So this is one of my latest tries to get it right:




First off, I wonder if I should not have incorporated so much into one photograph. I wanted to show the reflection of the bridge et al.

This is the exif:

f22, 400 ISO, 35mm, 1/60, EV 0 This was early morning light, started with cloud cover and ended with cloud cover. There were breaks and I tried to take advantage. I was there before light. I tried this photo every which way from Sat, that is when it was shot, yesterday. This was an early version, so I could incorporate the sweet light. The sun comes up kind of opposite the bridge. It sets over the city to the left of the bridge. Sunrises and sunsets have been abysmal.

I have one more place I know to go to take this photo, but I think that shows more of the old bridge and since the subject is "new", I think that the NEW bridge should be emphasized.

This is the gallery I started for January 2006, did it last night. Just now I put the other pictures from the past week, of the bridge, in this gallery, too. It is open to the public and the originals are available.

If this should be in another forum, please move it. I think most of you know that there is a marsh of Pluff Mud there and I can't move fwd. If I move backwards, there is a wall of trees. If I go to the bldg, behind me, there is a security guard telling me that I am on private property. So my movement is restricted.

ginger

http://gingerSnap.smugmug.com/gallery/1085076/1/50410216

That is the gallery access. I am shooting with a Canon 20D. I own three lenses at this point: 17-40L, 70-200 f4L, and the 400 Prime. I tried all except the prime here.

The water has been relatively rough like this, I would not expect a lot of "Andy" like night time reflections.

There is a walkway for pedestrians to go up the bridge. I would die doing it, I know that.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

If this is not the correct thread, please move to said correct thread,

ginger

Andy

ginger_55 wrote:

If this should be in another forum, please move it.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

If this is not the correct thread, please move to said correct thread,

ginger

G,

This *is* the Whipping Post - we don't "fix" in here. Moving to PS for you

Andy

I wonder why ISO 400? This shot screams for tripod, ISO 100. Try a different crop, maybe, Ginger? As is, the bridge is very centrally composed - let's try featuring it, and making it draw the viewer fully in to the photo:

Just a crop - no color or other corrections made (though I think it needs some curves adjustments)... The crop here still gives foreground, but not the "double foreground" in your original - which I find somewhat confusing, not pleasing...

Happy New Year!

DavidTO

Ginger:

Did you use a Polarizing Filter?

The problem with the reflection is that it's not clean enough to mean much. Maybe going the opposite direction with low ISO, long exposure. Neutral Density, mebbe.

I also wonder what the original looks like...

ginger_55

Thanks, so far! I went by myself that time. I had to go down a steep embankment to get to where I could see the bridge clearly, right at the edge of the marsh at high tide.

I was very scared that I would not be able to get back up, Bill was not with me, and the only tripod we own is his...................for studio work, very heavy. I will suggest that he come with me next time, see if he will carry the tripod. I do not have any neutral density filters.

I don't know why the 400 ISO, the night before or so, I did it at about 100 ISO. I would have upped the ISO, I just forgot about it and shot til about dark with that ISO.

Let me see what I have from that................there is so much in that gallery.

Also, Bill has not ever been down to that marsh area, he stands up on top and "waits". But he just said that he will carry the tripod down there.

ginger (Though what I am going to get from the tripod I am not sure. I can't go buy a neutral density filter until Feb....)

So, what do you all have in mind with the tripod?

The light has not been that dim.

Thomas, the originals are all available in the gallery and I gave the link. If you want the RAW version I can e-mail it to you from my g-mail acct.

ShannonW

Hey Ginger,

Try to have the bridge lead in or end from a corner of the image. Try to tilt the camera a little. I think maybe if you focus more on the angles of the bridge it would be more appealing. I know you like the marsh but, it does nothing for me. Maybe a sunset background with the same kinda light you have there on the bridge and incorporate more sky. Hope this helps. I know this is quite a trek for you to get to.

When I was in school we had several assignments in our design class to use three 36 exp rolls on one subject. We were suppose to shoot crazy angles even if it looked strange this really helped us to stop shooting from one position.

How about go on the bridge and shoot some of the lines and the architecture of the bridge. Just a thought.

Hope this helps and good luck! Hope this did not come across as me preaching from my soap box!

ShannonW

Ginger I just went to your gallery after reading your post. #43 IS AWESOME!!!!!

DavidTO

ShannonW wrote:

Ginger I just went to your gallery after reading your post. #43 IS AWESOME!!!!!

Yeah, how'd you pass *that* one up?

ShannonW

DavidTO wrote:

Yeah, how'd you pass *that* one up?

I dunno' know? I guess I missed the first reference to the gallery. Glad I saw it though. I'm a speed readin' kinda gal ad often miss key things. It gets me in all kinds of trouble.

DavidTO

ShannonW wrote:

I dunno' know? I guess I missed the first reference to the gallery. Glad I saw it though. I'm a speed readin' kinda gal ad often miss key things. It gets me in all kinds of trouble.

I was asking, Ginger, actually

ginger_55

I am waiting for a photo to dowload. I get confused, that is how I pass things up. Besides, I am not the best judge of my own photography, I know that.

But I hope I know which one #43 is.

Going to go look right now (actually, I didn't pass it up, I could only choose one to show you all, but I did put it into consideration, still.)

Andy

ginger_55 wrote:

I could only choose one to show you all, but I did put it into consideration, still.)

That was true when you posted in the Whipping Post. But then you said "Don't Whip, please fix - so we had to move it, and so now, you can post as many versions of the shot as you like!

Isn't it Great???

wxwax

Just because I like throwing a money wrench into things... have you tried standing in the center of the lanes and shooting down the length of the bridge? Sort of like those famous Brooklyn Bridge shots? With all those support cables etc. this bridge might lend itself to that kind of framing.

For example:

http://www.blackandwhitegallery.de/konvert/000301-lg-new-york-brooklyn-bridge.jpg

ginger_55

First the one I have just been working on, a generic bridge shot from Thursday night. This is the jpg made straight from RAW:



That was SUNSET. And the tide was lower, so I could get closer.
Exif: ISO 100, 39 mm, f 22, 1/13 sec



That is one way I worked it up. The only way to get light on the front of the bridge appears to be in the AM. This was getting darkish. (Bill was up in the same area and helped to pull me back up)

NOW HOW did I miss this one?????

I do them all the time, no one ever comments, I thought no one likes this stuff. I have an awesome one I took while driving over the bridge in a gorgeous sunset. No such sunsets this week. That one, the other one I took driving over, it was in the summer right after it opened.

I DO THESE ALL THE TIME: pieces to show the whole, to make designs. Kind of like I blur on purpose sometimes...................no one has ever showed an interest before and they are so easy to do.

This one I took yesterday. Last night I liked the sky so much on it, I did a quick workup and uploaded it to smugmug just for the heck of it.

It was taken much further away than the other photos, a place I had never been, I was bored and looked through my camera to see what the bridge pieces looked like since the bridge was totally covered with stuff from that vantage point. There are not a lot of places to photograph that bridge, though I can see the thing probably from Europe. IMO, well, I hate change!

Here, do you all like this???? Really, I have posted pieces, people say that they don't know what the things are and I had decided that pieces were only something I could enjoy. See, you all have seen the bridge photos and know where it came from.

ginger




What I usually do in something like this is I take about 5 photos and choose the one I like best. I pretty much follow the rules of design, usually, or I follow them in some and break them in others. I consider them just too easy and not something people seem to like of mine.

ginger (thanks)

ginger_55

That one, the bridge top, it was with my 400 mm prime, it sure cuts to the chase. That is one reason I like it, makes me see in a different way........other than the obvious, the birds.

g

I just love the colors of the "thing", the bridge concrete, whatever, looks like wood, but it isn't, and I can't stop looking at it.

Thanks for explaining the rules, Andy, that helps a lot.

ginger

ginger_55

This is the one from last summer!

And, Sid, are you going to bail me out of jail, or come visit me in the hospital? I can't just go out into the middle of the bridge???? And it is not really a straight bridge. Oh, heck, I see lots of neat stuff while Bill is driving. I usually delete it eventually, as I need the space. But that bridge is a mecca for designers.

This is NOT eligible! And the sunsets like this are not happening right now!




I was alone in my car, grabbed my camera and shot: this and a couple of others. After almost hitting many other cars, etc. I put the camera back down. Actually, I was going into Charleston to take more "normal" bridge shots for a challenge somewhere.

I have always thought this was cool!

g

Andy

ginger_55 wrote:

This is the one from last summer!

And, Sid, are you going to bail me out of jail, or come visit me in the hospital? I can't just go out into the middle of the bridge????

Very cool shot Ginger.

To be fair, the Brooklyn Bridge has a pedestrian walkway all the way across it.