LPS#4 An Idea

LiquidAir

PaulThomasMcKee

Cool "idea" - love it.

My preferrence would be to keep the square crop, but bring it in tighter to eliminate the foreground water and the larger pool to the right.

LiquidAir

PaulThomasMcKee wrote:

Cool "idea" - love it.

My preferrence would be to keep the square crop, but bring it in tighter to eliminate the foreground water and the larger pool to the right.

I am definitely still struggling with the proper crop on this shot. The original is quite wide of necessity for depth of field. I think I have enough pixels to do what you suggest. I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

ChrisJ

I like this one a lot! I agree, I'm not totally sold on the crop, either... I'm sure you've tried it lots of ways. You could also try the bulb horizontally on a re-shoot... might not look as good, though.

seastack

Wow! Love it!

Maybe less sky in the crop, dunno, I'm starting to see everything in thirds which isn't always good but since the sky at the top doesn't seem to add much I'd crop it a little tighter. I like it square though.

Tessa HD

what a concept
very creative

Tessa

urbanaries

Phenomenal. What an idea, and well executed. Gets my vote! (if I had one )

LiquidAir

ChrisJ wrote:

I like this one a lot! I agree, I'm not totally sold on the crop, either... I'm sure you've tried it lots of ways. You could also try the bulb horizontally on a re-shoot... might not look as good, though.

I got up at 5am this morning to set up and take the shot at sunrise. I then processed and uploaded it before going into work, so I haven't spent that much time playing with it yet. I also have a thought somewhat along the lines of your horizontal idea that I'll try if I can face another early wakeup call.

osoi

i think i just lost... that is an awsome shot.

LiquidAir

seastack wrote:

Wow! Love it!

Maybe less sky in the crop, dunno, I'm starting to see everything in thirds which isn't always good but since the sky at the top doesn't seem to add much I'd crop it a little tighter. I like it square though.

Thanks!

I chose the crop to center the bulb roughly with the top and bottom roughtly on the 1/3s lines. Unfortunately, the resulting crop put the horizion just above the center of the shot. The more I look at it, the more I feel the horizon either has to be dead center or convincingly on one side. I am still not sure how to balance both the horizon and the bulb....

LiquidAir

Tessa HD wrote:

very creative

Tessa

Thank you. The contest here have really pushed me to create photographs rather than find them. Its a different way of thinking, but it has definitely improved my photography.

Nikolai

Awesome idea!
I understand you wanna tweak it here and there, but in general - just fantastic!

LiquidAir

urbanaries wrote:

Phenomenal. What an idea, and well executed. Gets my vote! (if I had one )

Thank you!

As for voting; from Shay's recent post, look out! The call to serve as a judge for one of these may yet come your way...

LiquidAir

Nikolai wrote:

Awesome idea!
I understand you wanna tweak it here and there, but in general - just fantastic!

Thanks!

As I am sure you know, there always seems to be more to do on these constructed shots. I am going to play with crops on this one a bit before calling it a day. I also have a second spin on this idea that may be compelling enough to get me up at 5am just because I have to do it...

LiquidAir

I bowed before the altar of thirds and cropped it like this:

LiquidAir

Another experimental crop:




Edit: the horizon was slightly tilted on the shot (spirit level not enough for wide shots like this I guess) so I leveled it and also tightened it up a tad.

Edit again: clean up a bunch of details.

Nikolai

LiquidAir wrote:

Another experimental crop:

How about something like this?
Nice diagonal + thirds intact

seastack

I liked the square crop with the thirds until I saw the landscape crop that you entered. Perfect, just a great concept!

JimW

LiquidAir, this is an inspiring image. Way cool idea.

wildviper

I agree with everyone here. Amazing shot and creativity. With people like you, I do not stand a chance.

I like the "wide" version. In the middle is good...this one you can break the rule of thirds I guess.

LiquidAir

Nikolai wrote:

How about something like this?
Nice diagonal + thirds intact

From a purely compositional standpoint I think your is a good idea and I am thinking of going back there to take a shot of Z pattern in the sunrise without the lightbulb. However for this shot I find that putting the bulb on the 1/3 line over-emphasizes the contrived nature of putting a lightbulb in a sunrise picture. Its an odd, a touch ironic and maybe a rather personal reaction, but cropping the shot that way makes me feel a little too aware of the heavy hand of the photographer.

While we are talking about contrived, this shot was taken near the settling ponds for the local water treatment plant (Las Gallinas Valley Sanitation District). Most of the landscape there is actually contstructed rather than natural including that little waterway in the foreground. About 20 feet behind the camera there is a park-like bench which puzzled me during the day because it is really out in the middle of nowhere. Seeing that same bench at dawn makes it clear that someone must have specifically placed there for watching the sunrise. It leaves me wondering just how planned that view is...

Nikolai

LiquidAir wrote:

From a purely compositional standpoint I think your is a good idea and I am thinking of going back there to take a shot of Z pattern in the sunrise without the lightbulb. However for this shot I find that putting the bulb on the 1/3 line over-emphasizes the contrived nature of putting a lightbulb in a sunrise picture. Its an odd, a touch ironic and maybe a rather personal reaction, but cropping the shot that way makes me feel a little too aware of the heavy hand of the photographer.
...

I would humbly suggest to clone out the contrail on the left at least. You only need one artificial element in this shot (which is the bulb), not two..

LiquidAir

Nikolai wrote:

I would humbly suggest to clone out the contrail on the left at least. You only need one artificial element in this shot (which is the bulb), not two..

Indeed. Now that I am looking at going wide, I need to give the whole shot a "fine toothed comb" treatment. There is actually a con trail on the right as well which is reflected in the water.

LiquidAir

seastack wrote:

I liked the square crop with the thirds until I saw the landscape crop that you entered. Perfect, just a great concept!

Thanks! After looking at the close crop for a while, I realized that I had lost the halo around the bulb by cropping out all the blue areas of the sky. That sent me in the other direction in terms of crops. That and the fact that the bulb doesn't look all the great close up (oh why, oh why can't they make a $3 bulb from optical grade glass )

Swartzy

Sorry.....
I meant to post your thread like 2 days ago but you've got it down and entered already. This really is a brilliant idea. Ya want to send me some of those Ginko Biloba tablets so I can get my creative juices flowing . Geez, never would have thought of this in a few million light years. Wonderful.

Well, back to creating what's in the mind's eye...heh, easier said than done. Great work and inspiration.

LiquidAir

wildviper wrote:

I agree with everyone here. Amazing shot and creativity. With people like you, I do not stand a chance.

10 months (and 6500 frames) ago when I bought my 5D this shot would have been completely out of my reach. Don't sell yourself short on what you can accomplish in the next 32 weeks. I'll give you one hint: steal other people's light. Once you know what you want to shoot, look for an example of something similar with light that you like and copy the lighting.

LiquidAir

Swartzy wrote:

I meant to post your thread like 2 days ago but you've got it down and entered already. This really is a brilliant idea. Ya want to send me some of those Ginko Biloba tablets so I can get my creative juices flowing . Geez, never would have thought of this in a few million light years. Wonderful.

Well, back to creating what's in the mind's eye...heh, easier said than done. Great work and inspiration.

I came to this idea in a rather roundabout way. I was working on an idea similar to Greensquared's Soil Sample (post #33). Since our garden doesn't get direct sunlight until the sun clears our fence and that shot really requires a low light angle, I was considering faking early morning light by gelling a flash yellow. So I was working out the details of that idea and, well, things lead to things... The next thing I remember was working out was that placing the bulb in front of the rising sun was likely a good enough imitation of one of the standard techniques for lighting glass that the bulb would pop well enough to make the picture work.

When working on these competitions, I usually take something obvious and run with it right out of the gate. If I get lucky something better comes along in the process. If it doesn't I still have something to submit. Personally I find that working on a shot stirs my creative juices so once I have one idea, any idea, working it to a finished product tends to prompt better ones along the way.

Nikolai

LiquidAir wrote:

When working on these competitions, I usually take something obvious and run with it right out of the gate. If I get lucky something better comes along in the process. If it doesn't I still have something to submit. Personally I find that working on a shot stirs my creative juices so once I have one idea, any idea, working it to a finished product tends to prompt better ones along the way.

Same here. Even a mundane idea (not sayig yours is, but mines often are:-) is "betta 'dan nut'n'", and the better ones usually come along once you start working on it.