Fountain at Centenial Park

An additional 12 years of experience and a better scanner prompted me to resurrect this old favourite.  The original can be found in this folder (20th Century) 

Len, amazing tonal quality , composition and control of light & exposure.Many thanks for sharing this image of Fountain of Light.

It continues to amaze me the details the negative contains which can be brought to light via a decent scanner.  Of course, the film, NPH 400, has a lot to do with that too.  Thanks for your thoughts.  Best, LM.

Dear Len

Have you any reason that you didn’t use the rule of the third in this capture?. Thanks

Thanks for your visit & concern.  I really don't recall thinking too much about this one at the time except that I was drawn by the back lit spray.  But I'll think about it now.  It just seemed right at the time.  Some subjects do work well when centered & I thought this was one of them.  I felt that including the end of the break water wall was important and the wind, coming from the left, caused the spray to occupy space on the right.  I wanted to get them all in.  I guess that's why I did what I did.  Elements to the left of the frame and to the right had nothing to offer this scene.  Best, LM.

Thank you Len for your factual and logical feedback.

The details of the film you used I'm afraid is lost on me. My limited experience of film was a plastic camera and anything I could get that would fit it, in packs of 24 exposures or more, then a trip to the chemist to get it processed, only to later view a series of images that were under exposed, over exposed and several images of my fingers and thumbs along with a few photographically decapitated familly members ......suffice to say I lost interest rapidly as a child and it was only resurrected a few years ago when I discovered digital. Sorry to waffle on, but the former information serves to llustrate my amazement at the different exposure levels and detail you get from film. Even the shadows have detail and the reflected sunlight on the water hits the other side of the scale. As for "The Rule of Thirds"  I think this should be rephrased to "Guide of Thirds" as people do take it literally. This isn't quite central but sometimes a central composition is more dynamic, and sometimes it just feels right as I think this does here. The dof is another strong element that affects the composition and this has a wealth of interest in the background. Was this B & W film or did you convert it from colour? I would imagine the larger full size version would be an absolute delight to view with details of the spray droplets in the sunshine etc.

Best Regards

Alf

As I've hinted before this shot was composed intuitively, that is, without much conscious thought.  My original post, elsewhere in my 20th Century folder, was scanned from a 4x6 print 7 years ago on ( original taken 12 years ago) an entry level flatbed and edited with the much more primitive program for digital manipulation that came bundled with it.  The film was Fuji NPH 400 colour, though I preferred the converted B&W version you see posted.  Since my subject was a couple of hundred feet away the DOF is a non issue as I would probably have received a similar result even if I had used f 1.4.  As you have noted the biggie here is the tones and details a quality dedicated scanner can glean from an original negative when properly exposed.  In a nutshell that is the reason for the re-scan & re-submission.  I'm still toying with the idea of printing this one.  Thanks for your interest and novel sized comment.  I tend to go on a bit myself so you are with good company.  :-)  Best, LM.

Hi,

I liked actually also with black and white only contrast ...

thanks for the comment.

Maria

Thanks for your thoughts.  Your opinions are valued.  I liked it better in B&W too.  Best, LM.