We will win

thank you for your time and comments

OOOh, excellent shot. Your composition here is great!But i dont understand the title...!!!Congrats

Hi Konstantinos, thank you very much for your kind words. As for the title, just follow the arrow. But perhaps it was a tad too windy on monday when i took the shot. I'll be more precise tomorrow if it still doesn't ring a bell ...

It does not ring the bell... Laurent,the composition is nice, well done and interesting, the correlation is not... explanation ?....

This may be a british thing then. There is a story for this shot. What i found very interesting appart from the light, that day, were the three England soccer flags hanging from the windows, and the first idea was to use the arrow in the composition to make some kind of connection. Nothing else was supposed to be on the photo. Then ( and that is one of the really good thing I discovered with the digital camera : as I'm looking at a small screen instead of having my eye glued to the camera , I can still be aware of a whole wider vision), I saw the guy with the bag walking in the background, and decided to wait for him to be in frame. but he was walking slowly, and I was affraid the cab was about to move. So I shot as soon as the guy was visible from head to foot. Then, completely out of the blue the guy with the leather jacket just appeared, and not only I think he made the shot much more interesting, but he actually "stole" the shot, and the meaning. Still, perhaps because it is a bit more cryptic I decided to keep the first idea for the title and, as it made you both leave some comments ( which makes me very happy ) that was probably a good idea :-)

 

thank you very much for your comments

... in the title, and the title makes more sense with them in the picture. The fact that the both look pre-occupied and even unhappy makes it more meaningful. The football victory would mean even more to them. I love the composition (the arrow is a wonderful touch). Crisp black and white, clean and elegant shot. Amazed at how well the shot came out considering your camera. Well done, bravo.

That's what i really love about this website and sharing photos and ideas. Now the meaning seems obvious after your explanation. But for me, as I started with one specific idea, and then the shot becoming more interesting, but quite different, this meaning didn't came out.

as for the technic : I have been experimenting a bit, and here are some of the tricks I used on this photo. First I use the "incandescent" white balance from the camera for shooting outside. There aren't lots of different options for the white balance. Then I have to go usually half a stop down. Doing that allows me not to have a too noisy blue channel , which is one of the main problems I have with this camera. Then, when working on B&W, this little trick gives very distinct RGB channels, and I use these 3 different channels almost as we would use different exposures in HDR, blending them in different ways.

... Laurent doesn't it? That is some sophisticated thinking that makes this shot really sing. As to the intent and the result ... it happens all the time. So many shots of mine are approached absolutely with one idea in mind and then, a day or two later, a month, perhaps, another shot emerges. My last major shoot was seven weeks in September and October in France; PJ and I kept 16,500 shots (many many brackets) and I personally have only really processed around 80 shots. Maybe 100. I'll still be processing that shoot when we continue that project and shoot the French Pyrenees and Catalonia in September this year. And then I'll be even further behind. But that's the fun! Thanks for the info.

Good black end white photo !!

Patrick, thanks a lot for the compliment.

 

Dennis, yes, Laurent it is :-). About creativity, I believe creativity can't be just an idea. We need to experiemting with everything coming along in the process, and especially with the "hardware". Like the first guy who actually started to be very creative with two sticks of wood ended up with Fire ... Most of the experimentation doesn't come to anything usefull. But when it does, not only does it create some good surprise, but more important, it opens a lot of very new opportunities.

And about ideas. oh yes i know that so well. The first thing for me is that I never goes " today I'll make some photo" and then look for some great shots. I have my camera constantly with me, and when an opportunity arrives, I learned to be as quick as a cowboy taking his gun while involved in a duel. But I also shoot sometimes without any specific ideas. I force myself to shoot every day, and the good thing with the digital technology is : i dont't care anymore if a shot is good or not. And an awfull lot are useless. But the few interesting ones make me happy.

And yes my experience helps, but mostly in relaxing me while shooting, because i know I'll still have lots of opportunities to try to make somethign meaningfull out of a photo during post processing.

Thanks a lot for stopping by and your kind comments and encouragements

 

... not just the shots themselves, but the methodology for capturing. You and many other photographers that I admire have the camera always at the ready and can capture something extraordinary at a moment's notice.

 

Me, I think I should have been born when all I had available was a large viewfinder camera and a cloth over my head. I like solid tripods, carrying the equipment to the church, setting up, checking the lenses, calculating, levelling, adjusting the shift, and then shooting. And then I'll go weeks without shooting (although inevitably I am processing what has been shot) and don't miss it one bit. But in studying the shots I've taken it inevitably gives me ideas, improvements, motivation to do better next time.

 

I enjoy these conversations and the thoughts they provoke, Laurent. Please keep in touch.

Dennis, I enjoy these converstions with you and everybody on this site very much too and will be more than happy to stay in touch.

 

laurent