color -- then and now Ghosts on the Waterfront (Odessa)**

A seagull, a tugboat and a car ferry in one quadrant, and the foggy

harbor in the other three are the stars of this photo, taken after

sundown, Odessa's famous harbor, Ukraine. Your ratings and critiques

are invited and most welcome. (If you rate harshly or very

critically, please submit a helpful and constructive critique/Please

share your superior knowledge to help improve my photography.)

Thanks! Enjoy! John

It would have been easy to boost the contrast and/or saturation on this image to make it something it was not.

 

However, if this were reproduced in a magazine, I think it would be a most striking image; this is one area in which ratings do not tell the whole story.

 

I would love to find a photo such as this in a photojournalist essay on a place such as Odessa, and I think, blown up full-size in a gallery this would be a striking image.

 

I deliberately didn't 'manipulate' it, because it is an image in 'fog' and the whole subject is the disappearance of these two vessels into the foggy night. By boosting contast, I can make this into an entirely different photo, but to what purpose -- higher ratings assuredly, but that seems untrue to me, and a little pandering. I like it as it is.

 

John

I like this as is too. Im sitting here trying to figure out any way to improve it, but cant find anything. You could of course crop it from left into a square, that would look good, but the direction of the gull are putting the whole left side to "use", so no point in that. Well done!!!

This is one of those photos that is almost divided into fourths -- consciously from the moment I framed it. And the gull flying out of the frame was a plus that bound the 'upper right' to the rest of the frame.

 

The broken reflection of the boat(s) also ties the upper right to the lower right, which is harder to discern, since the water is rippled.

 

All in all, a very subtle photograph.

 

This was NOT a photo to try to use 'levels' or 'auto contrast' from Photoshop on, as it ended up looking more like a noontime photo, and destroyed its effect.

 

Thanks for the comment.

 

John