markwilkins

Also the key light on the girl doesn't match the key in the environment _at all_. Nice concept and composition though.

Any ideas of where to go beyond this? The goal is to try to catch the

spirit of the artwork... constraints are: no tripod, natural light.

Went a little over-the-top. Anyway, I still think that a lower angle would not serve the photo. :-)

The real value of this photo is the graphic quality of the reflection, shadow, and boy against the gentle color gradient of the wet sand. Adding cluttery elements such as the cabana, nearby trees, resort buildings, lifeguard towers, surfers, waves, sun, clouds, beachtowels, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. will destroy it. We can't let THAT happen!

 

Yeah, it's a pigeon. I was thinking about one of my other photos when I typed the title. Oops! (It's fixed now.)

 

Why in the world does the girl being the subject of the shot mandate that she be in focus? If she were nice and sharp the photo would just be another ordinary snapshot of a person. As it is it's saying "Look at this subject. She's blurry." I think that's a far more interesting thing to do.

 

Frankly, I like the way the composition and light draws my eye to the blurry girl... to me it communicates intention, not an unintentional mistake.

 

However if I were from Berlin I might be slightly offended at the portrayal of people from Berlin as faceless. :-)

 

on a second look it occurs to me that losing the hills and sky in the background also greatly reduce how open the space feels, and I can't imagine you'd want to make the impression of space in an outdoor photo like this feel constrained.

The problem with cropping this photo is that there are several competing centers of interest placed so tightly together that something or another has to go. Between the leaves of the tree, the trunk, the lake and hills in the background, and the bathing birds, I'm not sure it's clear what to sacrifice for the others.

 

Generally, I like the crop you started with if only because it gives you lots of details to look at without feeling too busy, and no one element dominates the scene. I think your second crop deemphasizes the tree trunk in a way that doesn't serve the photo well.

 

 

Unfortunately there's no good angle on this sculpture that yields a powerful silhouette, so going without fill flash never gave me a result that communicates what's interesting with this sculpture... but perhaps softening up the fill or taking it down a stop or so might help make it less intrusive.

 

(In a related matter, I'm amazed nobody has mentioned that from this angle the right shoulder looks a lot like a third breast. Had I seen it that way in the viewfinder I would have recomposed.

 

I've shot the stuff in that garden quite a bit both ways, with and without fill, and this was the result of experimenting to see if I could get a better result that way. Now I know what result it gives, and I'm trying to decide whether I like it or not. :-)

 

(Perhaps filling with a strobe from a glancing angle might place the specular someplace where it doesn't look like a reflection of a flash unit?)

 

What I'd love to do is shoot downward from directly above it, but unfortunately I can't get far enough up to get the right result that way.

 

Thanks again for all your thoughts.

Any issues with sharpness in this photo are not camera shake, they're depth-of-field. The exposure was made at f/1.4 and I was focused on the eyes of the sculpture. The exposure was about 1/250 with a 50mm lens, and on the print it's clear that it's nice and sharp exactly at the focus plane.

 

Is your issue that you'd prefer a deeper depth of field?

 

Thanks!! (The photo was taken with a tripod by the way.)

 

There are a couple of areas about which I'd like to hear otherpeople's thoughts on this photo.

* Do the hot spots from the sky detract significantly from the image,and if so would the best approach be to burn them in to match thesurrounding tones or crop more aggressively?

* Do the highlights from the fill flash help (in that they providemore definition to the shape) or hurt (in that they draw unwantedattention) and if they hurt are there other more subtle approaches forgetting light on the front side of the sculpture that may workbetter?

Note that the highlights are blown out on the print but theshadows have much more depth and detail than may be evident in thescan depending on your monitor's gamma.

"Martyr"by Rodin

It's regular B/W, but with a Red #25 filter. Thanks for the kind words!