Of God, Man and Pigeons

kurzvorzwoelf · June 22, 2019

Growing old can make you lonely.

torags · June 22, 2019

Growing old can make you lonely; that may be true... but he has the pigeons...

Good shot

Richard · June 22, 2019

Poignant scene. I like the composition a lot, but I wish I could see more facial detail.

sarasphotos · June 23, 2019

Nice shot and although I'm not sure I need to see more facial detail, I do wish the man "popped" out of the picture a bit more, whether through a crop or playing with light/dark/contrast/shadows or maybe a very slight vignette (and you know I'm not a huge vignette fan!). I really like that you get the sense of scale of the building vs the man and pigeons, so I'd be wary of losing that in a crop.

kurzvorzwoelf · June 24, 2019

@torags said:
Growing old can make you lonely; that may be true... but he has the pigeons...

Good shot

I guess it's a mutual relationship between the man and the pigeons. Feed vs. company...

@Richard said:
Poignant scene. I like the composition a lot, but I wish I could see more facial detail.

Unfortunately, I chose to stay a little in distance - one, to capture the whole frame with the cathedral and second, I still feel a little awkward when it comes to capture people up close most of the time. So sorry, no more facial detail

@sarasphotos said:
Nice shot and although I'm not sure I need to see more facial detail, I do wish the man "popped" out of the picture a bit more, whether through a crop or playing with light/dark/contrast/shadows or maybe a very slight vignette (and you know I'm not a huge vignette fan!). I really like that you get the sense of scale of the building vs the man and pigeons, so I'd be wary of losing that in a crop.

I chose to raise up the shadows around the man's area a little instead of a vignette. As I tend to often overdo vignetting, I restrained this time from doing one and chose the opposite approach - reverse vignette, if one could say. Result attached. I think it was a good idea!

Thanks for your feedback, everyone!

Juano · June 25, 2019

I like this shot a lot.

If it where mine I would change the proportions to 16:9 or something around those lines and get the man further to the right, cropping out the two columns. In my opinion, the first version is better, I would add more blacks though.

kurzvorzwoelf · August 14, 2019

@Juano said:
I like this shot a lot.

If it where mine I would change the proportions to 16:9 or something around those lines and get the man further to the right, cropping out the two columns. In my opinion, the first version is better, I would add more blacks though.

I might play around with the blacks when time permits (work and life keeps me quite busy recently), but personally I don't like 16:9 formats so much on my pictures. I don't know why, tho. I do think that the two columns are quite integral to the picture's frame.

Thanks for your feedback, Cristobal, it's much appreciated!

ccraft · August 20, 2019

Love this shot! It would make a fantastic print!

ziggy53 · August 20, 2019

Love the first version. The problem is that this does not translate well to a small screen.

This needs to be printed wall-sized to make real sense. You need immersion to feel this scene!

Really adore this scene and the right-most pigeon facing away, as if lonely/alone too (separated and detached from the others). Two souls, both simple and both in their own world.

If, perchance, the original is in color, try a deep red filter to see if that makes the man pop in the scene.

kurzvorzwoelf · August 28, 2019

Thank you @ccraft and @ziggy53 for the kindest words. Actually, you encouraged me to order a print of 80x60cm (about 32"x24"), just to see if you were right about it

I have increased brightness of red and magenta tones in B/W conversion, which actually helped a lot with skin color and details of the man. Thanks for the suggestion, Ziggy.

Of God, Man and Pigeons

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