'An Idle Metro Moment'

It's only minutes between trains on this rare, elevated Kyiv,Ukraine metro platform,

and this couple whiles away those summery few minutes by holding arms and hands

with the skyline as the background. Your ratings, critiques and observations are

invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very critically, please submit a

helpful and constructive comment; please share your photographic knowledge to help

improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

You captured a wonderful moment in time.  Well seen!  IMHO, I think you might have created a more intimate sense if you eliminated the tall building on the left and cropped up to the slanted billboard.  Nonetheless, this is a captivating image.

-Lynne

Thank you for the compliment.

I recently watched an excellent Lynda.com tutorial on composition and found it had two basic tenets that apply here.  

One is that each photo must have a subject.  Here the subject not only is the couple, which you find to be intimate and want to focus more closely to create more intimacy.

The second is that a photo must generally have some balance.  Here the mass of the couple on the right and the buildings on the right which highlight them or semi-silhouette them are partly balanced in this composition by the buildings on the left, and that was done intentionally.  If you crop the buildings on the left, it's a far weaker shot in my estimation and at least a very different shot.  It might be your shot, but not mine.

I aimed to make this an intimate moment amidst an 'urban landscape' with good colors, and think I succeeded, though raters apparently did not so far after nine ratings.  Ah, well, sometimes there is great collective wisdom in ratings, but raters have their predilections which are different than yours or mine.

I like this shot very much and realized it would not 'score highly' but nevertheless posted it because pleasing to me -- sometimes raters surprise me -- and greatly so -- it's one of the great mysteries of the rating system here on Photo.net and I have respect for the raters here collectively.

Thanks for giving your evaluation and letting me know your thoughts as well as taking the time to write them down; it's very helpful.

john

John (Crosley)

I forgot to mention above that the crop you envision was impossible no matter what with my camera and lens or with any camera and lens on the narrow Metro elevated platform and still maintaining the 2:3 aspect ratio.

I dislike cropping though I do it, as I find there often was great wisdom in original cropping where the lens length was set properly, I had time to compose and fire, and the camera aspect ratio was appropriate.  Here I felt highly it was, and until they get variable aspect ratio Nikons, which I don't welcome, I'm sticking to a standard 2:3 crop.

I admit in the in-camera editing they have other crop aspect ratios available, however, so if they are desirable, they are achievable right on the spot, and sometimes I do use them where a 2:3 aspect ratio just won't work.

I just am a great admirer of the 2:3 aspect ratio -- 3:4 comes in second, but a distant second.  Your crop would have required a more severe change in aspect ratio, and helped destroy the balance that the Lynda.com lecturers emphasized is so vital to the success of a photo's composition.

Is that clear, or clear as mud?

;~))

john

John (Crosley)

Wonderful moment!

I agree.

Raters, unfortunately, don't.

Ah well, that's the vicissitudes of the ratings systems.  

And against it having your own personal artistic taste.

Thanks again.