The Good Ole Days

Very nice photo! I like the subtlety of the HDR processing and your use of it as an enhancement as opposed to using HDR to heavily alter the feel of the photo. Very nice work.

Nice 1936 Ford sedan. I enjoyed looking. Love your treatment.

I like the computer work on this shot. It is stylized, and has special effects obviously, but not cartoonish treatment, and in my opinion, appropriate to the subject. An interesting piece of work. I have no crop preference to suggest, although I agree that some of the grass is a little too much grass. My compliments. Boy, those pumps in the photo are museum pieces. Glad you caught this time travel study. Even the neon lights on the garage sign.

A very well executed HDR image. I could tell that it was tonemapped, but that doesn't bother me as I think the execution is good and the colors and the contrast works out well. Very nicely done, this easily stands out in the best 1% of HDR work I've seen on the Web.
As for the image overall, I have to agree with observations about perspective and cropping mentioned earlier. The crop should be close to square, the foreground not being particularly balanced in the composition (light, even foreground with a rather detailed darker middle ground). The perspective has too much of a "lean" that comes from using a superwide and tilting the camera too much, but despite this I would not fully correct the lean. Rather, it would be worthwhile to experiment with a fully corrected and a partially corrected image, as full correction may lead to somewhat static compositions. I would however try to leave a little bit of room around the gas bumps in order to not make the crop too tight. A wide angle shot should retain some "airiness".
Overall a strong image that can be improved by a very simple crop, rare occurence.

Best HDR execution I've seen on PN. Bravo! As for the lean and a crop - I believe you did right with the tight crop, Steve. Who needs those pesky modern automobiles in the background (that would definitely appear had you not cropped tightly)? Well seen, well done!!

Very appealing photograph, both for the eye candy (juxtaposition of colors and textures) - as well as the feel-good nostalgia I get from the subject matter (much enhanced by Raub's handling of color). I am even more amazed when I see how much more magic the final shot has, compared to the original. Good vision, and masterful post-processing to make that vision real.

 

This work does bring to mind an ethical issue I am struggling with in my own work, that has to do with photographing other artist's work. It's not much of an issue with this photograph, because most people would not describe the assemblage of car, building, signs and pumps as "art" - but none-the-less someone (I'm assuming not the photographer) did collect these objects and arrange them in a certain way.

 

In no way am I criticizing Steve Raub, who has more than proven the "value-added" he brought to this scene. But if, for example, I take a photo of an oil painting - a straight-on documentary catalog style shot, I could hardly expect to get much credit if I displayed it as "my" photograph. Any value the image might have would obviously be the intellectual property of the painter.

 

But if I photograph a composition of a group of outdoor sculptures in dramatic light, or the window of an art glass shop full of colorful vases cropped just so, then it seems I am in a gray zone, ethically. How much of the art in the finished photo is mine, and how much is due to the art built into the subject matter?

 

Again, nothing against Steve Raub, to whom I apologize for going off-topic, or this photo, which is above reproach.

 

Is there any consensus on the ethics of photographs which depend, at least in part, on the creative work of other artists?

What makes a photo your "own" is that it is from your point of view. I agree with you about the spot on catalogue comment. But when you find one's art and capture it through your own set of ideas and composition, you make that view yours. Because when you get to the nuts and bolts of it, a photo is nothing more than the way you see a thing and capturing that vision. One could take your point so far as to say that you can't take credit for photographing people because you didn't give birth to them. But you did pose them and you did set the lighting and the shutter speed and the aperature and pressed the shutter release at just the right moment.

I want to thank Photo.Net for providing me the opportunity to learn through all your feedback. This has been a very rewarding experience.
Thank you all.
Sincere regards,
Steve

One thing photographers never include on Photo.net or any other site are the details. I challenge all of us to tell where our photos are taken and what the story is. In this case who collected the exhibit together, if that is what it is, and while we are at it, tell us what it is. It is obviously in the middle of some city. Care to identify which one? Is it a museum open to the public? Care to tell us where the car came from and whether it was moved to this site for the photo? Care to mention what kind of car it is and who restored it? Were the pumps always there or were they moved to the building? Was it ever an actual gas station? That sort of thing.
I'm wondering if light would have been better at a different time of day and if the wires and extra modern cars could have been eliminated through a different composition. Was there any way to move the car? Was it just left there? But there I go again.

 

Alton, on some level I agree with you and on another not. It would certainly be interesting to know if an image is a commercial shot (where one has control over placement etc) or, what is probably the case here, just a chance encounter with a roadside interest. But, bottom line, I am not sure that it matters--at least to the quality of the photograph. An image either works or it doesn't it seems to me, everything else is extraneous.

Now certainly there might be some personal interest as to where something interesting might be located, or how a shot was made, but I am not sure that is part of the POW purpose. I believe it is to discuss the image, not the process. Some of your other questions also are critical when submitting to a magazine many times, although not always.

In any case, I think the POW's seem to digress into many issues that don't have a great deal with whether the image was successful or not. Adding more detail, I believe, would provide more distraction to actually talking about the merits of the image and push things more to the process.

John A.
Thank you for your observation.
The image was captured as a result of a visit to Salado, Texas. The purpose of the trip was to take my wife and her sister to Salado for some bead shopping, however, I typically bring my camera for opportunity. There was absolutely nothing commercial or arranged for this image. I saw the station and the car that was parked there as I past by on Hwy 35, seemed like a great opportunity for an image, hence the shot.
There was nobody around to position the car or add any other element to the image.
I am grateful for all the positive feedback and some critical composition suggestions received.
Thank you for enjoying a bit of our history:>)
Steve

Thanks, Steve, for those answers.
John, I actually work for a magazine about small aircraft and have a degree in journalism--two, in fact. So that must explain why I ask so many questions.

Alton, I actually wondered about that!

The old gas station with nice details...Actually,this version is better than the original...The colours are alive here and the composition is very good...The colours in original version is a litthe colourless...The edited shot is really better,and the power lines and cables are not appear in this version...The idea for ommiting the power lines and cables is very good and make the shot more effective...The shot is strong and thnx for sharing...Regards(Bobby).

Alton Marsh and John A
One day in an art museum - a museum not in my home town but a 3 hour drive across the state - I realized I was spending most of my day reading the little cards beside each painting rather than looking at the painting, itself. Why would I drive half way across the state to read those little cards, and not spend my rare museum time looking at the art? That is when I realized how different left brain thinking is (words, logic, facts) compared to right brain thinking - experience, senses, art.

For that reason, I prefer to NOT have a lot of words displayed next to my photos. The words are a distraction from the visual process because they lock us into the left brain world of abstraction, which filters sensory experience.

Photos function on many levels (as do paintings) - if documentary, that is, here is something that happened in a particular place at a particular time - then a caption is appropriate. Just be aware that if you are presenting an image not as journalism, but as art - something to be experienced at a sub-rational level, something to be enjoyed for it's composition, colors, and emotions - then a caption may be at cross purposes to your intent.

Because Steve Raub's photo is of a scene which is already out of bounds in time and space - that is, a photograph of a collection of objects from various places and bygone times - it lacks provenance - and functions much better as art than documentation. For that reason, I might prefer not to know too much about the when and where. Let me enjoy the illusion without telling me what I am supposed to be seeing.

Gary--

Something worth considering is that this is not a gallery. It is the Photo of the Week section, specifically a forum on a photographic web site set up for critique and discussion (words) about photos that are chosen as interesting. While I often agree with you about how distracting words can be, in this forum especially I think ideas about how the photo was created, what went into the thinking behind it, whether the photographer achieved his goal, etc. are all appropriate. Of course if the photographer prefers not to give out information, that's up to the photographer. But I think it's all fair game here and should actually be encouraged. There are plenty of galleries to visit and just experience the visual aspects. This forum is really meant for more than that. I'm glad we have it.

Disclaimer: only an unskilled amateur here, with not much to show of my own work.

But I have to respectfully disagree with most here w/r/t the cropping - it's a little tight on the left and a little long on the foreground,; but I think that overall the original crop is superior aesthetically to the others posted here. It's just a personal bias though as I've been shooting a lot of vertical myself lately.
The HDR is well done and not overcooked as others pointed out. One can tell it's HDR right away but this doesn't count as a strike against it for me: I can tell a black and white photograph right away also but I don't see why that's relevant...

Love the subject matter and the use of HDR for this subject. Just a hint of frame misalignment around the weathervane and the sign on the roof top. Is this a 5 frame Merge to HDR and what aperture have you used for the Canon EF 17 - 40 f/4.0 L USM lens as the foreground is just a bit fuzzy? Overall I still like it. Regards Steve

any idea what the make of the car is or represents?

In response to the posted question, the car is a Ford Model De Luxe Fordor Touring Sedan 1936. The greyhound mascot on the front was made by Ford but probably added later.

 

Fantastic , very bright and it feels so alive.

Thank you , you brightened up my day.