gerrymorgan

A wonderful shot! The tight crop enhances the importance of the various shapes in this photo.

You have a wonderful eye for this type of thing, Fee. Balconies, traffic cones, and now bananas!

I like the strongly thematic nature of your portfolio and this detail fits in well with your other Waikiki photos.

You have quite an eye for these balcony abstracts, Fee. I've enjoyed your Waikiki series.

Very nice -- the light intensifies the shapes very effectively. Ricardo's suggested crop is interesting. It might make the image more abstract. But it also moves the human subject closer to the edge and away from his current strong position. I'd be inclined to to shave only a tiny amount off the top (perhaps this is what Ricardo means) or perhaps not to crop at all.

Your inset is a great way both to convey a sense of scale and to show more detail. Everyone seems to be in their shirt sleeves. Was it a warm, spring day? Or just hot work?

Impeccable timing!

It's great that you thought to take photos like this back in 1961. It's very interesting to see what people wore for this type of excursion in those days.

I like how the positions of the people in the shot (especially the person on the right) convey a sense of how deep the hole is. Great colours for 1961!

I like the red reflections on the ground. This is reminiscent of your Hanoi scooters. Perhaps a Thailand tuk tuk series?

Beautiful! I love the droplets of dew. I presume this was early in the morning and that the insect was not active yet. If not, you did well to get so close. Is it a bee fly (member of bombyliidae, perhaps sparmopolius fulvus (but I could be wrong about that -- depends where you took the photo too).

 

Is this a single image or a combined stack of images? The depth of field is impressive.

I like the original too. My eye naturally travels down the line of lights on the left, and lands on the bluish light, which is right below the dome of the Invalides building. The difference in colour of the light draws attention to the dome and helps to keep the eye in that area of the photo.

Nicely seen! I like how the shape in the window echos the sunflower. Sunflowers in Prague in February?

I love the flying dirt against the dramatic sky. It really adds to the sense of movement. One thing that strikes me about this photo is that your fast shutter speed has completely stopped the action, and yet it completely captures the sense of movement. I think the flying dirt helps a lot.

What a magical place! And I love what you've done in this photo. The light is gorgeous and the long exposure really works well for the waterfall. I also like the diagonal of the hillside in the background.

Nice -- I like the reflections and background blur.

Wonderful! Keeping the camera still and letting him jump in and out of the frame was a great idea. And the fence running through the three photos really holds them together as a set.

I like the dramatic steam and the train's smiling face.

A beautiful panorama. Very nicely done. I agree with Steve about how the composition keeps the eye in the frame.

Flying debris -- that makes perfect sense and it definitely adds to the photo.

Hi Andrew,

I'm pleased you liked the crop and the more open shadows. Let me explain what I did in Photoshop (I was using CS3, but it's the same in all recent versions). And you would be able to make a better job of it because you have access to the TIFF or whatever you originally scanned it to. Basically, what you need to do is to create a Levels adjustment layer and then to mask out certain portions of it so that they do not take effect. Here's how to do this:

1. At the bottom of the Layers palette, click on the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon (it's a circle that is half white and half black).
2. From the context menu that pops up, choose Levels.
3. In the window that appears, use your mouse to grab (i.e., click and hold) the triangle that appears in the middle of the histogram (just above the box containing the number 1.00).
4. Using your mouse, drag the middle triangle to the left until the shadows look how you want them to look. Ignore the fact that you are blowing out other parts of the photo, we will fix that shortly. Just focus on the shadows that you want to open up.
5. When you are done dragging, click OK. (In other photos, you could also have adjusted the left and right triangles in a similar way, to adjust the white and black points, but in your photo this is not necessary because you already have pure whites and pure blacks).
6. At this point, your photo looks awful (overexposed). We will fix this in the steps that follow.
7. Notice how, in the Layers palette, you have now created a new layer called Levels 1
8. In the Layers palette, click on the white square that is in the Levels 1 layer.
9. Type Control-i (i.e., the letter 'i' while holding down the Control key) on a PC, or Command-i on a Mac.
10. Notice how your photo goes back to how it originally looked and the white circle in the Levels 1 layer turns black. Technically, what you have done is to invert the mask. When a layer has a mask (as this one does), only those parts of the layer that are covered by white parts of the mask have any effect on the photo. And you have made the entire mask go black. In the remaining steps, you will selectively make the areas covering your shadows turn white (thereby exposing the detail that you revealed in the steps above using the Levels tool)
11. Press the letter 'b' on your keyboard. This selects the brush tool (you could have just clicked on the brush tool in the Tools palette).
12. Holding down the Shift key, press the '[' key (left square bracket) four times. This gives you a soft brush so that the edges of what you are about to do are feathered.
13. Your cursor should now be a transparent circle. if it is not (if it's a cross), turn off the Caps lock.
14. In the opacity slider at the top of the Photoshop window, select an opacity of 20%
15. Press the 'd' (letter 'd') key. This ensures that you are painting with a white brush (you can now toggle between white and black by clicking the 'x' key).
16. Click and drag on the shadows in which you want to reveal detail. You will need to control the size of your brush and you can do this by using the '[' (left angle bracket) key to make it smaller and the ']' (right angle bracket) key to make it bigger.
17. By painting over each shadow in this way, you will reveal detail. If you overdo it, use the 'x' key to select a black brush and paint the shadow back out again. It's a nice way to work because adjustment layers are non-destructive. If you go too far, or get lost, you can always delete the adjustment layer (the Levels 1 layer) and start again.

I hope your Leica is back in working condition now. Let me know if you need any more information. I hope you have access to Photoshop, by the way. I was using the full CS3 version, but this type of thing should also be possible in the later versions of Photoshop Elements.

A very dramatic shot. I like the angle of the rotors, the high contrast and the vignette. Also, you have the right shutter speed to show just the right amount of motion in the rotors. Is that sensor dust or are they using chaff to confuse any nearby photographers?

Great shot! And a very similar style to your Jawa photo, which I also like. Now I see there's a number on the front of the bike, so I presume you were photographing passing bikes in an old motorcycle rally. Wonderful stuff! Do you have any more?

I like this shot a lot. I love the sharpness of the bike against the beautiful background blur of the scenery. It gives it a kind of 3-dimensional quality. The red bike makes a nice splash of colour too. And the riders look like they are having a great time on their old Jawa.

 

I took a look at your other photo too -- the shot of the old BSA in a very similar style (I like your style a lot by the way). Will this be an entire series on old bikes in the environment, or just the two?

It looks to me like a pale tussock moth caterpillar (calliteara pudibunda), but I love the toothbrush idea.