# 248

I am on Photo.net to learn, so any comment will be appreciated very

much.

Lars,

I too, am on here to learn. I'm completely a beginner but, very eager to become acquainted with my new camera.

I absolutely love your B&W work. Especially this piece. There is so much depth.

The shadows, fractured light and contrast between the hard edges of the metal and composition of the bike against the soft and still of the water and reflection of the trees in the background, together make quite an amazing shot.

Balance

I don't know if you have done much editing or tweaking with this or not. Looks like some possibly....but whatever you did (and I'd love to know what, if you did or not) it works beautifully.

I love it :)

-Michelle

OK, Lars,

I'll take you at your word.  First let me say that you have a pretty good gray scale in this photo with just a little loss in the shadows.  I hope you are using Camera Raw and not jpeg.  It is possible with Camera Raw to essentially redevelop the image.  Jpeg is developed in the camera body.  You do seem to have limited depth of field to the point where detail is missing from the bike.

I guess my strongest suggestion would be to give every photograph a meaningful title and not a number.  You viewing audience deserves a cue as to what the image is about.  If the title were "abandoned bike" as opposed to "bike that killed Frank Smith in the race" your viewing audience would be tuned to different expectations and would view the image differently.  Even though the image is worth a thousand words, it does not include a self-title.

Regards,

Jerry Matchett

Hi Lars, very interesting shot - congratulations!

Jerry makes an interesting point about titles.  Sometimes I agree with that point of view, sometimes I don't.  When I don't agree, it's because a title can restrict a viewer's interpretation of a photo, and that may not be good.  However, in this case I think it would be good because I'm trying to figure out what I'm looking at.  Is this a bike partly submerged, or a photo that has had some blurring effects poorly applied?  I can't tell which.  There is a lot of bright, white area in the photo, and that draws the eye away from the bike; imagine if this were cropped just above the handlebars (or even below the handlebars).  I wish I had a more complete response, but without knowing what I'm seeing and without any hint as to the photographer's intentions, I don't have much to add.

Thank you all for your very interesting comments. I will certainly consider the comments about titles and so on. For now I shall try to explain myself.

I found this motorbike lying in a river in France near a village which name I don’t know. A first I didn’t notice the motorbike, and the whole scene felt quiet, nice and calm. Getting aware of it however disturbed all that – it raises a lot of disturbing questions. Has there been an accident ? Did someone just want to get rid of it, and if so, why ? Has it been stolen ? and so one. I have no idea.

These disturbing questions, I think, keeps ones attention and thoughts captivated – and that, I think for my self, is a quality if it is conveyed to the picture, although it doesn’t become a ‘nice’ picture but a disturbing, or even mildly unpleasant, one. I think it is a quality, if a picture occupies the viewers mind rather than pleases it by being ‘fast and easy’, because I like pictures that occupy me for some time best myself – other people might feel differently. I think pictures can easily have the ‘captivating quality’ for a lot of other reasons that signs of something being wrong, but in this picture of course this is the case.

Re. Lars

PS.: No blur effect has been added in PhotoShop, but an ND filter was used.

Remarkable object and scene. Very inspiring. Excellently discovered and captured (especially the submerged parts) and edited in b&w. Regarding the compo I agree to Stephen, I would crop it, especially I would remove most of the upper portion (maybe one third of the entire area of the photo), hence the viewer's attention would be much more drawn to the object. I have tried / checked some different crops of it here a few minutes ago and in any case they are still (or even more) very aesthetic but more focused IMO. BR / Volker