petemillis

Micki, I like what you're doing here with the shallow DOF and experimenting more with the camera. This picture looks pretty rough and ready, but in a GOOD way - if you know what I mean. Very unusual - again in a GOOD way.

 

 

Micki, nice centre-piece, and well taken with the shallow DOF. I wonder if it might be improved by being cropped not quite so tight on the left? The front of the train has run out of the frame a bit.

 

Also, I think CHOP CHOP should be in there somewhere ;))

Man, these categories kill me - more choice needed! Anyway, this is

a rendition of a vision I had on the village green this evening.

It's the war memorial where wreaths are laid on Remembrance Day. It

was very dark.

 

I parked and my headlamps were directed perfectly to illuminate the

crosses, so I took out my 10D fitted with tilt adapter and the Mir

26B lens, and went to work for a few minutes.

 

The only post processing has been conversion to BW, sepia tint,

slight levels adjjustment and sharpen.

 

This is one of my favourites of the bunch, but I would like to hear

your thoughts again on composition, and whether the tilt has worked

well for this subject. I took one straight, and to be honest it

didn't do very much for me.

 

Thanks and best wishes to you all.

 

Pete

Ahmed, you mentioned the colours in my picture of "Limpets", and the colours here in your picture have really struck me. The contrast between the brightly coloured items on the camels contrast so well with the neutral colours of the camels themselves and the background. This looks fantastic - a well captured photograph.

 

Best regards.

 

Pete

Ahmed and Rachel - many thanks for your comments. Creatures like these are one of the reasons I will never move away from the sea :)

 

Thanks again.

 

Pete

Well, because of work I haven't had a chance YET to re-shoot, but I will this week.

 

Dennis, your suggestion is definitely something I'll look at with trying the tilt both ways to see which fall off of focus works best.

 

Fred, many thanks for adding valuable thoughts to the conversation. I have found out what the problem was with the focus, and it was definitely to do with trying to use the poor 10D screen in poor light and I ended up with the focus slightly too far to the right and I also left the image fairly soft in post processing. I have just this minute changed the focusing screen in the 10D for a split/prism combo one and I hope this should help a bit with the MF. The standard ground screen of the 10D is definitely hit and miss, and I'm sure I can make do without the AF marker points as I only ever use the centre point for AF anyway. We'll see how it goes this time!

 

 

 

 

Dennis, your comments here are very valuable and I appreciate them. The use of the tilt lens was actually a forethought, only I rushed through the composition of the image and should have spent more time thinking about my objectives. You are spot on in saying that the eye would be lead straight to the door anyway with the composition as it is and I can see why the use of tilt may in fact have been erroneous if it's sole objective is to lead the viewer to the door. And in this case, that was the sole objective!

 

This is a shot that I will definitely re-do to see how it can be improved. After reading what Bernie has said I think the image does do something - i.e. possible evokes a feeling of uneasiness or discomfort - and I am quite happy about that, and if this had been mine initial objective then I would be very pleased. Hmmm, I have plenty to think about here - I'll keep this one, and try and take another that does what I originally wanted.

 

Many thanks again - you have all been most helpful.

 

Pete

David, many thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, and I'm pleased that it hasn't made you suffer mental discomfort. I see what you mean about the focus could be better. I found it very hard to focus sharply on the doorway given the very low light, and the fact that I was worrying about the rain (I later remembered one of my camera rain jackets was in the car!). I will try harder next time which may be this evening.

 

Pete

I haven't done many shots like this, and I would appreciated

thoughts on it from a technical viewpoint. The limpets are stuck on

the side of a sea wall. I used fairly wide aperture to obtain small

DOF. The only post processing has been a crop and slight adjustment

to curves in Canon DPP to tweak the contrast at low, mid and high

range (following the techinique described by Keith Hensen at

www.northscape.co.uk). Before this the image looked slightly flat.

Any comments at all would be much appreciated.

Again, a wonderful image with so much of interest to look at. Only thing I would consider doing is removing the marks to the top of the frame - two on left and one on right, and the mark at bottom to the right of the stem. Otherwise, spot on.

 

Pete

Stanislav, this is a beautiful image with a great sense of movement and life, and the colours work so well together. Great composition. I really can't think of anything I would do to improve it.

 

Pete

Bernie, I really appreciate your 2 cents and I'm actually pleased that the image has caused some mental discomfort that has resulted in you commenting on it - this is much better for me than for a picture to be ignored ;) I agree with you that there is some air of mental discomfort here, and now that I look at it more I can imagine drunkenly staggering up the path to the door before collapsing in a heap and feeling sick! The initial intention had been to draw attention to the warm and inviting doorway in an image that I think would otherwise have been pretty dull, but I see now that something else has happened. Your thoughts of disquieting seems about right, but I like that now. I will however reshoot this image with no tilt if the opportunity arises over the next few days, and see if it does anything different - I think though it'll be boring!

 

Thanks again Bernie!

 

Pete

Ahh Sujit, the one you have attached is spot on. A very strong image with lots of interest in the crowd below. I like it very much.

 

Pete

Sujit, you have nice tones of colour here for the stonework and for the sky, but I think you could have done better from the point of view of composition. You have some really well composed photos in your portfolio, but I think in this one you have lost too much from the bottom of the gateway. The use of a wider angle lens and lower angle would have produced a stronger image, as would moving further back and including some of the area around the gateway.

 

Please don't take offence - these are just my thoughts and intend to help you.

 

Kind regards

 

Pete

....if the use of tilt lens was the tight thing to do here. There

has been NO Photoshopping in this image. Just used Canon DPP curves

to lift the image a bit as taken in very low light and heavy rain.

 

Lens used was the Mir 26b (45mm on medium format which I think works

out at equivalent 135mm on crop sensor Canon 10D) along with the

Arax tilt adapter to give 8 degrees of tilt to the right.

 

What I wonder is this - does the line of sharp focus from using the

lens tilt, and the resulting out of focus sides of the image, lead

you nicely to the door and the reflection on the path? Does it make

for a nicer image to look at than it would have been if the whole

image was in sharp focus? I'm trying to use the tilt for artistic

effect rather than just for the sake of it. For me, this image works

well, but I'd be interested in your thoughts.

 

Kind regards

 

Pete

David, this has worked a treat - wonderfully vibrant colours and beautiful effect. You have done a good job. I like the maple leaf. I have never ever seen a marijuana leaf in my whole life so I was able to see this image in all innocence ;)) I look forward to seeing more of what you can come up with.

 

Pnina, you have capture this moment in the dance rehearsal really well - I can feel the intensity and energy coming through in the image, and the crop that you have come up with after speaking to Gordon works very well indeed. I think it is great that this is a photograph you took in rehearsal as it is so good to see the dancers in their rehearsal clothing rather than in full costume. A big grade A from me :)

Shaun, nicely captured bee - really crisp and fresh looking. What close-up filter were you using?

 

Pete

This image works really well as well Shaun. I like the diagonal split between each half. My only concern is the top right hand corner where the rich tea biscuit coloured bit is. This seems to sit a little awkwardly with the rest of the colours in the image. What do you reckon on replacing the colour

to match another bit of the image instead?

Hi Shaun. This image works really well - I like the contrast between old style and modern mountain bikes and helmets. I think you've pulled this off well.

Ian and Gord, many thanks for further thoughts on this. I understand exactly where you are coming from re the patch of sky. In my "Stanmer House Fence second shot", this area is slightly smaller as I did a small crop on left to remove another car headlight. I thought the lighter area of sky at the top left sort of complemented the similarly sized darker bottom right corner, but I may be wrong and the sky is perhaps no more than a distraction. What does bother me a bit though is that the cloning is adding foliage that isn't actually there - I know this might not be such a big issue, but wonder if an alternative would be just to darken this area? Do you think that might work? I need to have a look to see if it's something I can do in PhotoStudio as I don't have PhotoShop!

 

Ian, what I'm trying to do with the tilt lens is to use it just for "artistic" reasons to create a certain mood and feeling and to produce images that could perhaps have been made with a view camera. Hopefully that is coming across. I do see a lot of pictures where there doesn't seem to have been any reason to use the tilt and it has actually detracted from what would otherwise be an ok photograph. But I also see many examples of where the tilt has been used to excellent effect on architectural and landscape photographs. Also, this Keith Carter guy http://www.keithcarterphotographs.com/ has some fantastic photographs where the tilt has been used to create something special. the images that don't really appeal to me are the ones that make towns look like model villages. I know it's interesting how this works, but I like proper model villages better! I'd like to do more portrait type shots using the tilt as these can work really well and I don't see many when looking through the postings on various forums. If you see something I have done where you think perhaps my use of tilt is wrong then I really would be grateful if you would tap me on the shoulder and say so. I can imagine it is quite easy to fall into the trap of using the same technique on everything in sight...

 

Thanks again to you all.

 

Pete

for looking at these pictures for me. I'm still struggling with the car/no car situation. And to resolve the issue I have decided to keep both! This image has only a very slight crop on the left hand side to remove a car that was just coming into frame and so it manages to retain the symmetry of the patch between left and right hand side of the frame. I find if I crop the car out of the other image then this symmetry is lost which is a shame as I like it. So the decision is now to keep both as two separate images.

 

My current struggle is surrounding the lighter area of sky at top left. Ian has kindly offered this up with this area cloned to remove the sky and it works very well which I'm pleased about. But then I find it hard when it sticks in my mind that the image has something added (more tree) that isn't there in real life! I know it's only a bit of foliage but I find that the lighter area at top left somehow complements the darker area at bottom right. I may be misguided though and should step back for a short while and reconsider whether it is really just no more than a distraction. Oh decisions decisions decisions!

 

On a technical note, this photograph was actually pretty hard to take. Trying to manually focus and adjust the tilt on the lens to bring into sharp focue the part of the image I was interested in was pretty challenging given the very low light and the fairly dark viewfinder of the Canon 10D. I had aimed for the whole of the fence to be in focus such that there was a region of sharp focus, but think that I had perhaps one or two degrees too much of left tilt. I'm starting to get a feel for it and am happy that I'm heading in the right direction and using the lens tilt for the proper reason - i.e. artistic effect and to create a mood or certain feling - rather than using it just for the sake of it, which, as Ian pointed out in his post on the other picture, often seems to be the case.

 

Many thanks again David for sharing your thoughts on this. I'll be popping over to see what you've been up to very shortly (today or tomorrow as I'm off work till Wednesday).

 

Pete

I need to sleep on this now though....I like the picture without car and with car each for different reasons and now I'm in a quandry!

Well Pnina and Fred and Gord...I'm thinking more and more about the car, and more and more I'm thinking it should stay. My initial thought when it was mention that perhaps it was out of place was that it did look a bit wrong and distracting - old building, old looking image, and modern car. BUT, when I took the photo I took it knowing that the car was coming into view. Fred mentioned "film noir" and wondering who the car was waiting for....and the funny thing is, the car stopped alongside me and inside were a couple of uniformed and "fluorescent vested" security guards who just looked at me for a few seconds before slowly moving off. I think they wondered why I was snooping around there in the dark, as the house now contains some very expensive apartments and conference facilities. So there was indeed an air of "film noir" about it all! Fred, thanks for your comments on this picture - much appreciated.

Biliana, thank you so much for letting me know how much you like this picture. I also like it a lot, and the more I look, the more I'm enjoying it :)

 

Your question about why we like images that look old has me thinking. For me, I think it has something to do with the feeling that there seems to be some permanent pressure on us to produce images that are "perfect" - you know, all this pressure from development in camera technology that captures images in finer and finer detail, and boasts that such and such camera produces perfect skin tones and perfect colour rendition and perfectly sharp focus and so on. It's the same with audio where technological advancements mean audio rendition is being improved all the time.

 

But with all these technological advancements we seem to be trying to produce perfect renditions of something that is not perfect - a person's skin isn't perfect, the bricks and joints in a building aren't perfect, the sound from an electric guitar when distorted isn't perfect - yet we are often pressured these days to produce perfect renditions of imperfect things and to remove the blemishes that make them imperfect.

 

Although I marvel at how well equipment can produce close to perfect renditions of the subject, I often feel that this perfection lacks warmth and comfort. So now I marvel at how well and easily this modern equipment can allow me to use an old technique (with the tilt lens) and help me produce something that looks old, and warm, and comfortable!

 

Sorry I have spoken so many words Biliana, but every day I pick up my camera and think about what to do is a day that I will always remember - I'm finding my journey very exciting :)