Why aren't these working?

cletus

I took these a while back. When I was shooting these pictures, the subject looked so promising. When I got home and opened the pictures in PS I was completely underwhelmed.

Does anyone see something I should have done differently?





-Eric

jimf

cletus wrote:

I took these a while back. When I was shooting these pictures, the subject looked so promising. When I got home and opened the pictures in PS I was completely underwhelmed.

Does anyone see something I should have done differently?

The 2nd one is pretty good although I'd have tried to move the dark gravestone out of the frame (ie move to the left a little and shoot more to the right). It just keeps grabbing my attention away from the subject.

The first one has two issues pop out at me. First there's the barrel distortion -- it's loaded with it and it makes everything look wonky. But even without it the picture doesn't pop out; it's too regular, too centered, and has too much stuff in it. If I really wanted to capture the whole gate I might have tried to shoot at an angle to the gate rather than straight on, depending on what's around, but my guess is that it'll be real hard to capture the whole gate plus trees and gravestones in any really compelling manner. Instead, I think I'd try to only capture part of the gate and make something in the scene stand out.

I mucked around with some cropping and think that an interesting crop would be something like this:



Now the tree is the subject and the gate top and gravestones frame it. I might crop off even more of the top.

mystic7

cletus wrote:

I took these a while back. When I was shooting these pictures, the subject looked so promising. When I got home and opened the pictures in PS I was completely underwhelmed.

Does anyone see something I should have done differently?
-Eric

This is not a criticism, I'm trying to explain why the first picture is underwhelming. First off, the landscape isn't quite as busy as it may have appeared when you were there. It's kind of sparse. The straight on angle is kind of boring too. Plus there's too much sky. There's not much you could do. I think a professional with the proper equipment at his disposal would have gotten in a cherry picker and shot down, getting the gate and the cemetary into the frame without the sky. Finally, the lighting is kind of flat. You might try making this B&W, since that would lend itself more to the content of the picture. Hope that helps.
M7

mystic7

What I had in mind
If I had time I'd add more atmosphere, but this is what I'm talking about.
M7

cletus

jimf wrote:

First there's the barrel distortion -- it's loaded with it and it makes everything look wonky.

Yeah, I took that picture with a 16mm fisheye. It tends to bend everything

rutt

mystic7 wrote:

If I had time I'd add more atmosphere, but this is what I'm talking about.
M7

I like this Mathew Brady treatment. I thought I'd try an alternative. I noticed two technical issues in the original:

1. There is a cyyan cast and the contrast is relatively low.
2. I imagine you took this with a DSLR that is something less than full frame. So your fisheye effect was somewhat mitigated.

It's easy to fix 1. I used the classic Dan Margulis CMYK color correction to make the whitest parts of the clouds be really white and the darkest part of the gate be black. I made sure the trees and grass were greenish. And then sharpened.

I'm not so good at the parts of photoshop that I wanted for fixing 2. I wanted to increase the barrel distortion to get something more dramatic. I ended up using the sphere distortion filter. I'll bet there are much better solutions to this.

Anyway, I don't think my result really addresses the fundemental composition issues. Mystic7 and JimF did that better than I can. But it's interesting to see what simple postprocessing can do:

hutchman

Hey John,

Let me know when the 10D is back. It looks to me like the price is right and I'm ready to spend some money.

Sorry for the hi-jack Cletus.

Hutch

Baldy

Light. Everything looks dull with midday light and so much better during the golden hours.

gus

can someone give me the story on the place ?

cletus

Humungus wrote:

can someone give me the story on the place ?

Sorry, I don't know the history of the place. I'm not sure that it really has any historical significance. As far as location, it's out in the middle of farm country in north western Iowa. There is a small church, which is still in use, across the road from the cemetery. That's about all I know!

komet

Baldy wrote:

Light. Everything looks dull with midday light and so much better during the golden hours.

Baldy, could you elaborate on that issue a bit...light? I do agree with your "golden hours"...I assume you are alluding to morning/afternoon...would like to see further thoughts on this issue.

wxwax

I feel another Photography 101 post coming on.

komet

wxwax wrote:

I feel another Photography 101 post coming on.

How else do you learn?

wxwax

komet wrote:

How else do you learn?

Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree completely. I like my pals to be as non-judgmental as possible, saves me lots of embarrassment.

Wrong forum, but here's a little of what I can say about light.

The sun is a small light source. Small light sources make harsh lighting. So shooting in the sunlight in the middle of the day gives you harshly lit, contrasty photos. The light doesn't have a lot of color to it either, so the shots are rather plain.

In the morning and in the evening, the light is far different. The sun's rays are being filtered through much more of our atmosphere. All the particulates soften it, and give it a nice golden color. I'm also wondering if it doesn't become a larger light source in the morning and evening - diffusing through and reflecting off of the atmosphere? Anyway, the lighting's less harsh, shadows are less pronounced and things take on a nice color.

There's an even later time of day, when to the naked eye the sky is almost dark, that the camera loves. It will translate that dark blue sky into something rich and inviting. That's a good time to pull the trigger on some building shots.

komet

Nice pics, Waxie.

wxwax

:encore

Baldy

wxwax wrote:

Oh my GOSH!! Did you shoot that? It looks like a Shay original. Nice work! bow

wxwax

Why thank you. High praise. It were Patch's suggestion to shoot at dusk. And I ripped off his framing too.

Seamaiden

I know I don't know my arse from a hole in the ground, but I think I see what you were going after with that entrance. I wonder if just blurring and lightening the background might help, then going for that sepia or b&w tone Mystic mentioned (I really like the change in effect/impact with the sepia use on it).

lynnma

wxwax wrote:

Why thank you. High praise. It were Patch's suggestion to shoot at dusk. And I ripped off his framing too.

Wonderful shot Sid.. for once I'm speechless... or as they say in England "gob smacked".

GREAPER

I have never been a huge fan of the fisheye distortion shots but this one is nice. The light could be better, but you are there when you are there sometimes.

I was just wondering...

If the gate is the subject but the background seems cluttered, your comments made me wonder. What if you took the shot from inside the cemetary with the church in the background, then flipped the image so the writing would be the right way. Am I right in thinking this might work?

came back to edith this because I tried it. This is the shot from in camera from the back side of a gate.

GREAPER

and then flipped

pathfinder

GREAPER wrote:

and then flipped

Cool trick!