jarrod_connerty

As captivatingly mysterious a photo as must be the person who shot it.

That this is reality-based photography is truly awe inspiring. I salute your superior talents and creativity.

I like it quite a bit, and am generally obsessed with images as true to reality. But for me I think it would work better if it were two exposures sandwiched together in photoshop; one with whatever aperture would provide just another depth of field to retain the screen, and another just-slightly-out-of-focus portrait of the subject from the same locale. Put 'em together so that the faces are pointing up in the same direction & you'd have a phenomenal image to me.

but would work better if the non-building background on the right were cropped out.

Using a shift lens isolated on its nodal point, I shot the same five

positions with the lens shifted to either of its extremes. Then I

assembled them with Panauve Image Assembler. It never seems to come

out 100% exact using my current settings but I'll deal with it for

better overall sharpness/contrast otherwise.

Whattya think? I had other shots with better light and more perfect

composition, but for me the closeness matters more.

great shot, james. I love how the sense of motion is quite static at the frame's bottom but becomes more apparent as you move up. By the time you approach the first dropoff there's no more sky reflection, indicating lots of movement.

My only technical complaint is that you lost some detail in the sky and the darkest shadows of the rocks don't seem to have any detail. Hence, a gradual ND filter of .6 power would probably have solved this perfectly. By the way, is the whirlpool visible in real time or only in an aggregate exposure?

worthy of your high standards

don't think you could raise the exposure without blowing out some of the highlights. the 'problem' is the latitude of the film is insufficient for the scene. there is a stripe neutral density filter, which could've been positioned diagonally on the frame to help bring out more detail in the other portions.

very good color. are you satisfied with the 180 sigma? i've been toying with getting that or canon macro 180 for more working distance with live subjects.

here's what I would do if I could reshoot it. 1) longer focal length. See if you can isolate just the two soldiers' faces you can see with the flag; it doesn't have to be the whole flag, just enough of it to let the viewer know what's behind the statues. 2) fill flash and a reflector for the horribly underexposed statues. 3) I would put a graduated .6 ND filter on the sky/flag portion and probably a small amount of color, like an 81b or light cyan to add a touch of tone to the sky without completely messing up the whites in the flag.

works well enough for me, but doesn't seem that sharp on my monitor

147 viewings and 1 comment attests to the uninspiring beauty of this image