Steps

The more I look at this the more I realise how blown out the highlights are. It was a hard time of day and location to get this sort of thing right. Anyone else have any thoughts on this or suggestions for future attempts?

(Thankyou for the comments thus far)

The exposure can be bad but I find the black/white pattern made by the steps with the girl and the jacket breaking it extremely appealing.

Don't care about the bad exposure, a picture can always be better, until you find the better you can get is the one you already have :c)

Great picture.

It's a nice image Andrew, but I wouldn't be crazy about the blown-out highlights either. I might guess that your meter was "fooled" by the dark area of the steps and automatically opened up a bit more than you wanted. Too bad because this looks like bright sun and that's an easy situation to manually set exposure for.

FWIW "steps 2" is much better (but that image is bettere balanced in terms of light and dark areas and therefor easier for the camera to get the exposure right).

This reminds me of scenes of people at the monuments in Washington DC--steps as far as the eye can see.

I think sometimes we get too caught up in perfect exposure and technique here on p.net. This isn't a portrait, rather a slice of life. Burned highlights can be useful to create feeling, as in this example. To me this is about isolation and having to fight against everything--exams, schedules, work etc. Sometimes you just toss the bag on the steps and sit alone for a while.

SP: Your appraisal is spot-on. I swing from actually liking the blown out look of the shot (for similar reasons mentioned by David) to being disgusted with myself for making such an obvious mistake. It's definately one of those things to learn from. Thanks for the feedback.

David: Thanks for seeing the substance behind this, for it is this which is ultimately most important :-)

David, I would agree up to a point, since blow hightlights can easily be acheived in post-processing. But wanting to capture as much information on the negative (or image file nowadays) is a still a worthy objective. Nothing gets (easily) added to the print that isn't already there.

And Andrew, the more I look at this the more I like the graphic quality it has. Search for an Edward Hopper painting titled "Summertime" to see what I mean.

I too will not concentrate too much on the technical aspects of the photo. I like the feeling of isolation, and how the bag is far away from the woman as if she is trying to get away from what's there. In small print, this can also be interpreted as a woman floating in front of the Venetian blinds (color reversed).

One other point, perhaps if the sitting person can be moved off-center, this would create a better feeling of relative size of the space, I think.

My initial instinct was also to zoom in closer and compose so that the girl would be sitting on one third and the bag on the other third. However, this did not leave me with as much of the 'steps' pattern as I wanted, so the composition you see here is a trade-off between working with thirds and including more of the steps. I did this because my main motivation for this photograph was having the girl isolated/enclosed by the pattern itself and the bag was merely a bonus.

Thanks all for commenting, I really appreciate the feedback I am getting here.

I love the idea here, these type of shots appeal to me a whole lot. There are number of things I like here; the graphic qualities of this shot, simplicity, how the stairs appear to be flat (thaks to long lense). There are however things that I would suggest differently. I would prefer the girl a bit lower to the right, her highlights are blown out a bit, I am not an expert on equipment, but if you camera has spot metering you may consider spot metering of the brightest points in the picture, and then recover the shadows in the darkroom or digital postprocessing. As it is right now, in photoshop you may try selecting her and increasing blacks in whites using selective colour, this may help a bit. There also seem to be a bit of distortion, if you look at the steps at the very top and botton, you will notice that the middle of the steps is further from the edge then on the corners, I peronally think that straightening it out would strenghten the image.

IMO the image is very well done except for the nit picking I mentioned.

Peter

Thanks for the feedback, Peter... it is not nit-picking at all, rather it is very much appreciated.

Re:

Placement of girl to lower right? Perhaps... and I can see how that would work, but I still like the idea of her being 'penned in/isolated' by the pattern and having her towards the centre better helps that concept along.

Unfortunately I don't have spot metering on this camera so I'll have to notch the over-exposure up to a learning experience. I whole-heartedly agree with you on the need for some additional work here in Photoshop. Thanks for the suggestions - this is something I will look at when I have time.

Distortion? Yes, I considered attempting to straighten out the lines to make a more perfect pattern, but then the idea of having something which messes with your eyes a little also appealed to my admittedly strange aesthetic tastes ;-)

Thanks again, these kinds of critiques are most helpful :-)

The highlights are indeed a bit burnt, but I think it's part of the game, here. I like the stronge light/dark pattern of the steps (which crosses my eyes terribly, indeed) and the way the girl pops out of the screen: a human form in this unreal setting.

As for her pack, I would have liked it not to be there at all, if any!