Three Gentlemen Outside The Shops

I've been struggling somewhat with my photography...especially with regard

to tones and composition. This photo was taken on a cloudy day with the

WB set accordingly. I'd appreciate constructive critiques, please. Many

thanks.

seen your portfolio, there is nothing wrong with your feeling for composition. Just keep, at the first place, enjoying while working, so shooting, inclusive the part of looking for subjects. Probably the above possibility (..) came up while watching. Even with all luck of the world the situation dreaming of, maybe never would pass. Haha,yes, that's just the challenge. Here, the third man just is ruining the idea by his walking..

The head problem: the top-windows are destructive plus the amount of grey on that style on the right. Even already the grey pillars with the too much dark of the men, are a "small problem of balance. I was playing and did crop the top a fraction, for even partially cropping a head, sometimes harmless can be done. The hanging lamp isn't pleasant as well.The style of your dream here is asking for a nearly perfect tone balance. Some luck, while carefully cropping, is needed, however it wasn't possible in an at least slightly convincing way. Cover the windows and you will notice the improvement.

Afterward noticing isn't difficult, while shooting it's just a "feeling" at the very moment, for one can't analyse everything on the spot. Your feeling for tone balance forinstance was perfect in the raiway station with bench. So encourage and enjoy. Shoot what you visually like (!) above the, an idea. If it's fitting together: OK..! :)  See you Samrat, Olafgiraffe.

Ps  Do have some visually great shots seeing first later a "story", prefer calling them just surprises.

Thank you once again for your valuable input. I really appreciate how you put time and effort in helping me improve my photography.

You are so right; sometimes a photo just falls in place. As you correctly noted, the nearest person just "came into view" and I had a trio. I had little time to adjust or plan the composition because this man kept on moving. The best I could do was to shoot when (I thought) he balanced the other two men.

You are quite encouraging with regard to my ability to compose, and that is very reassuring. But tones remain my weakness and has been pointed out to me by John (Crosley) in the recent past. Now that I have downloaded the trial version of CS5, I have found that the screen resolution on my netbook is not sufficient for the program.

The windows (and the streetlight) are prominent as I kept my aperture small to accommodate the person in the distance. That also ensured the word "COSTA" to be displayed prominently. I thought that was a distraction but let it stay.

Regards.

Big smile overhere, didn't notice the word "costa" at all.. :) 

I would have tried for some "texture" or detail in the blacks.  Maybe the backlighting was too strong for that? Maybe you had to choose between texture in the brights or the blacks but could not get both? Good diagnol line and similarity of characters.

Thank you for your input.

To be honest, my photos do not turn out as good as I want them to be, especially with regard to clarity. To put this photo in context, it was a cloudy day with a bit of drizzle off and on; a typical English day. The settings were f4.5, 1/40s, ISO 100 using a 50mm f1.8 lens. My aim was to get the composition right but in trying to do so, I have (and often) compromised on the quality. More often than not, my photos are not "tack-sharp". As a result, they not only look a bit out of focus but also suffer with problems in tonality.

Do you suggest I should overexpose a bit for the darker bits and then recompose the shot?

It is a good photo. It is not an easy foto to shoot. Nobody could shoot it better than you did.  The weather was on your side. Sunny day would have blown out the background (so would overexpose) -then it would be a bad foto. The exposure is perfect. The camera is focused on the background so the foreground (50mm lens) won't be focused. But the background has all the beautiful gray zones, so I like it as is.  I would have used ISO 400. That would give two F stops or shutter speed steps in your favor.  A rule of thumb: The shutter speed should exceed the lens focal length if you are shooting "hand held". So hand held at slower than 1/60sec for a 50mm lens is "iffy" for getting a sharp photo. In low light situations I try to brace the camera against something.

Thank you once again. A little nugget at the end regarding the ISO and shutter speed...will remember the next time around. And thank you also for the encouraging comments. It means a lot to me. Regards.

I note you are shooting at ISO 100 'for quality'.

All the quality for reproduction in the world means nothing unless you also have 'the image' and readers and viewers, except perhaps galleries and museums, will overlook a lot of 'reproduction quality' deficits if you have a great image.

One of Photo.net's greatest images, a museum goer looking at a giant painting or lith of a giant paper clip, was taken by a now departed street artist who shot it with a point and shoot.  It was (and somewhere is) a great image.

Some of  Cartier-Bresson's early works, shot with early Leica lenses, are quality disappointments if you examine quality only (perhaps film/development issues too), but they are so great they stand alone and no amount of poor lens quality (early Leica lenses has many problems), did not stop those images from being 'great'.

Meir's advice should probably read that to shoot (for steadiness choose 'one over the inverse of the number of the focal length'. Thus if shooting a 50 mm lens one shoots one/50th of a second minimum shutter speed. 

I regularly break that 'rule', as I'm a very steady holder.

I recently hand-held a vibration reduction lens at 0.3 of a second at night in a tunnel, and got a very usable exposure and a non vibration reduction 30 mm film equivalent) exposure at 1/6th second.  As the shutter speeds reduce, subjects do move, so you get their blurs and your own blurs if you are not rock solid in hand holding. 

I am a very steady holder, but if tired, cold, freezing and shaking, that does not apply, plus it helps to  make multiple exposures at once when conditions are bad in the hopes (at low shutter speeds) that ONE will work out, even if many are ruined by your own movement and/or subject movement -- hence 'C' (continuous servo) (formerly motor) drive can be a great benefit.  Also, subjects blink and having more than one shot will allow you to have  a choice when the subject blinks just as you shoot; you've got a second or third choice.

I'd not shoot, however, anything but landscapes at ISO 100. 

A minimum except in Israeli/Egyptian/Californian sunshiny climate would be ISO 400 generally. 

Some shooters now shoot everything with modern cameras at 1/800th of a second if shooting for depth of field, which in many kinds of 'street' can be very helpful. 

If you shoot at dawn/dusk, then you are forced to use minimum shuttter speeds and highest ISOs anyway, so best to learn to use them and become a steady holder; learn to plant your feet or do as American basketball players do -- stutter step, and when 'stuttering' that step, take the shot. (it implies shooting while temporarily stopping all movement, forward and sideways)

Of course, sideways movement is the worst, and forward not so bad, unless one is shooting with very shallow depth of field, so practice not moving your camera side to side especially during slowest exposures.

One early landscpe in my portfolio, color, was shot hand held at 2 seconds, wide open with a telephoto, with my  back against a car, my elbows braced against my chest and I am certain I willed my heart not to beat (my elbows were braced there), and of course I did not dare breat

You should learn to shoot skillfully at slow shutter speeds, and you will when you use a tele at dawn, dusk and at night (as I frequently do), or in tunnels, (when they stop shooting suspected terrorists in the base of the neck there in London -- and of course anbody with a camera was once  'suspected terrorist' right?

When darkness requires a faster shutter speed to prevent subject blur, and my camera will accept it, I shoot at 1/2,500 every day, seldom if ever going above that, but with the D3s and the D7000 Nikon would like to try -- it's an image quality problem.

But shooting at ISO 100 is likely to produce lots of very dark photos, no matter what, though they will be crisp.  At the same time it will require for most instances shutter speeds be very slow, and you'll miss tons of shots or subjects will be blurred from their movement even if your camera is held rock solid except under bright daylight.

Good street has a habit of not waiting for bright daylight, especially in Europe and in London or the greater UK.

;~))

john

John (Crosley)