geoffs1

Is the framing intentional?

It seems odd to me. In general, I like to compose moving things so there is a little more room ahead of the subject to help convey the sense of movement.

Technically, the shot is a little flat and soft. Mechanical objects (cars, planes, etc.) generally seem to look best with a bit of "punch" from careful sharpening and also contrast. It's a tough shot with the sun on the far side, but I would experiment with letting the near-side fuselage get a bit darker to increase the overall contrast. If you can find a curve setting that darkens the sky at that would also help make the plane pop of the background.

This is my first attempt to explore incorporating the intrinsic

characteristics of the digital sensor as an explicit element in a

photograph. Does it work on any level?

Very nice texture and tone in the foreground sand. I like it.

Too bad you couldn't hold a bit more detail in the sun on the water, so your eye has something to look at when it gets to the end of the line of bumps. Also, it would be great to have something that helps your eye back to the lower right-hand corner when you get to the end of the bumps near the upper-left. The footprint in the sand almost does it.

This is a compositional study. Please let me know what you think

about it. Many thanks!

Nice use of positive and negative space.

Have you experimented with a slight shift to the right (ex. to put the eyes right at the 1/3 point)? It would be interesting to see how that changes the "feel" of the composition.

Nice contrast in sharpness and tone between the foreground geese and background buildings/sky.

There almost appears to be a halo around the buildings in the background (esp. the two towers) that makes them seem even more ethereal. Is this just the lighting, or the result of some "Shadow/Highlight" adjustment?

I'm curious what people think of the relative tone in the chocksvs. the background elements. I've been playing around with making theboard darker or lighter to alter it's contribution as a "negativespace" element.

The cropping is another aspect I can't seem to get completely happywith. There is a bit of image outside this cropping below and to theleft, with quite a bit on the right (an 8x10 crop from a 3:2 frame).The feeling of the image seems to change dramatically with theplacement of the chocks relative to the lower left of the frame.

Any suggestions, critique, etc. Thanks!

Great framing and composition. Too bad the weather was so gray. The colors are flat. Have you consider it in B/W?

P.S. I have a soft spot for Lancs. One of my uncles helped restore the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum's plane.

"Dehazing" is a local contrast enhancement technique. You use the normal unsharp-mask filter, but with a large radius (20-60 pixels, depending on the resolution of the image) and a very small amount (perhaps 5-20%) and a threshold of 0. This contrasts with the typical USM sharpening parameters: radius 1-2 pixels, amount 100-150%, and threshold of 10. What it does is enhance local contrast, where "local" is approximately the radius you've choosen. I use it for two things, one is removing haze from the distance in landscapes, the other is for ading some "pop" to photos of shiny things with sharp-edges and pinpoint highlights (cars, planes, etc.).

It's a widely used technique, but for the life of me, I can't seem to find a good reference that describes it. Here's a link to a nature forum with some examples (see post #3): http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30930

It'd be a great photo if only the background were more dramatic... stupid weather!

Overall it's a bit flat; the lighting just wasn't very dramatic. I'd see if there is any way to increase the contrast and "pump up" the colors on the plane; try to make it stand out from the gray background as much as possible. Maybe a bit of "dehazing" USM would help. A bit tighter cropping would probably help, too. There's a lot of empty gray around the plane.

I was hoping for an even bigger version when I clicked on "Larger". Very nice. I esp. like the contrast between the highly detailed foreground and the transition to the gorgeous smooth sky.

Just curious: did you apply any kind of a gradient filter to get the effect near the top of the photo? It looks very natural in any case.

I haven't done a lot of B/W in the past many years, but when I saw

this pair of footsteps dried in the mud I knew it would look good in

B/W. I'm curious about what people think of my choice of contrast:

too much? too little? Are the shadows too blocked up? Are the

highlights too blown out, or not bright enough?

Many thanks!

This was a difficult shot because the burners on the balloons were run

for only a few seconds at random times. In order to get more than one

balloon lit up I had to expose for 30 seconds.

Should I let the shadows block up a bit more for drama?

Any critique welcome, but I'm especially interested in color/contrast

suggestions. It's a somewhat flat image, and I like the feeling, but

I'm trying to add a bit of "zip", too.

In retrospect, I may have been too low in my ratings. It's a very nice portrait. I particularly like the "just right" shaddow across the face; just enough to give depth, but not so much to stand out or obscure the right side of her face.

The background is the biggest downside of the shot. I hate it when stuff in the background just seems to move around at the last moment... ;-)

Cheers,

Geoff S.

Really nice colors, contrasts, and textures from the horizon up through the banded clouds. I love the feeling of depth in the colors.

The slightly sloping horizon...

The closeness of the two boats is distracting. I can help but think it would have been a stronger composition with just the foreground starbord tacker, or if the two were a bit further apart. Hard to say...

Driving home from work I was watching a storm off in the distance. I

stoped at two locations to take some shots. This was one of the last

ones. A 30 secound exposure captured a number of discharges.

I like the visual separation between the horse/rider and the background. There is almost a 3D feeling to the photo. Nice feeling of motion and action.

I notice this isn't marked "unmanipulated"; is there some post-processing that's heightening the foreground/background separation?

Cheers,

Geoff S.

This is really the first photo of an evolving "work in progress". A

runway at my local small airport lines up with the sunset during the

spring and fall. My hope is to visit regularly and capture a series

of photos under different weather conditions and seasons. This

particular photo was taken on a not very spectacular evening while I

was scouting one shooting location looking west, but it turned out

surprisingly well. I would be grateful for comments on this photo,

but also suggestions for other treatments of the subject.