petemillis

Boy and Dog.

 

This is my first submission in some time due to seriously large work

commitments. Any input on this would be very much appreciated.

David and Micki. Thank you both for your comments. David, I too like this as is now, with the dark line across the eye, and am glad this is the way it worked out. Micki....oh the time! This is something I have been seriously lacking over the past few weeks - no time to get on the PC due to working long hours (trees.....gardens....fences...walls...and more daylight means more hours outside working and more feeling of being knackered when I finish!).

 

I hope all is well with both of you. I will find time this evening to look at recent work from you both along with my other PN buddies. Much catching up to do!

Perfect way to show what you were up to! Cool. Was the tip any good?

Dave, I think this photograph is great as one of the global moment submissions - I like the way it shows the people you were with also taking part. Like to know more about the restoration area if you'd care to share.

 

Excellent. I really like this, and the tighter cropped Under Ice 2, but feel this one has the edge. Brilliant self-portrait. A slight shame that the ice doesn't go far enough to properly cover your left ear - it looks a bit left out. But still great idea and execution.

Fred, many thanks for coming back with what I had asked for (and sorry it's taken a few days to acknowledge that). I've run off a couple of prints of this photograph now - the highlight in the hair seems slightly less obvious in print and it seems to work quite well. My gut has convinced me not to alter it. I'm wondering how to go about getting some more detail shown of the eye socket on the right hand side of picture. I can see how this could benefit the picture, but haven't worked out how to go about it. I guess I need to do some work on selective manipulation as I really don't want to lighten up the right hand side of the photograph any more. Will keep working on it and see what happens.

 

Something I did notice just now is that my crop isn't perfectly central - the ear on left hand side is slightly further from edge of frame than ear on right hand side, but I can't shift the cropping to the right any further, and really don't want to lose any of the top and bottom, and I want to keep the square crop. Not sure what to do about that at the moment!

 

Pnina, many thanks for sharing your feelings on this photograph as well. I hope you don't think the kids are always so serious or miserable looking ;) and he's not really behind bars (well, at least not when he's behaving :) )

 

Thanks again both of you.

Cheers Thomas. These two pictures of your have shown me how well things can work with layers/overlays. Inspiring! So thanks again.

This is great too Thomas. I'd be really interested to learn more about how you arrived at this photograph. Any chance of some info like you gave for "emerging"?

Pete

Thomas, it certainly works extremely well. There's a brilliant sort of surreal or supernatural feeling coming from the photograph. And I like your idea of photographing concrete on the drive to use as a texture layer. Wicked!

Wicked! I love the way this photograph really sums up the way the authorities want to stop kids (and me) having fun! Well spotted subject and great in its composition.

Such a calm and relaxing feeling from this photograph. Lovely balance of tones between bench, mid distance and far distance landscape. The only thing I'm not too sure about is the darkness of the vignetting affecting the nearest parts of the picture - it seems too close in tone to the bench itself and I think it possible reduces the overall impact. I may change my mind about this though when I look at this photograph again in the morning.

Fred, many thanks for sharing your thoughts on this photograph. You're right about the sense of awe, wonder and thought, and it being a very live moment. I took this while he was playing a game on the Nintendo Wii, and he was getting really carried away (Sonic The Hedgehog!). So there was lots going on in his inner world!

 

If you get a moment, there are a couple of things I'd appreciate your thoughts on with this photograph. There are a few small highlights where the light just caught his hair at the top, right of middle, of the photograph. I like these as they follow the arc of his short fringe from left of picture to right and help lead into the darker detail on the right hand side of the photograph. But I was wondering if they look like they shouldn't be there. What d'you think? Also, my monitor is calibrated by eye using graphs/scales so I'd really appreciate knowing how the dark detail appears on the right. To me, it looks spot on on the monitor and also prints how I want it. I won't say how I see it in case it makes you see something that isn't there! A few moments of your time would be really helpful.

 

thanks again.

 

Pete

Craig, many thanks for the kind words. It would be great if someone would get me a job when I've finished the PhD (STILL doing it)....trouble is, it doesn't involve the things I like doing...photography, skiing, dog walking... And it's nowhere near as enjoyable as putting together photographic ideas that pop into my head when I'm either sleeping or digging or climbing trees!

 

Lex, thanks again! As for how I came up with the idea....well, I've got some glass shelves I was about to throw out. As I looked at them I remembered some picture Gordon Bowbrick too of a plant growing up between two panes of glass. And recently I bought my daughter a microscope and started thinking about microscope slides. And I also remembered the pictures Rachel Foster took where she illuminated flowers from below and behind with a small LED lamp. And the nice BW photographs taken by Ian Cox-Leigh came to mind as well. And I just happened to have my tilt adapter fitted to the camera. So it all sort of happened!

 

Gord, thank you too! I'm going to be shooting this again shortly and will give it a go with a slightly smaller aperture to increase the breadth of the in-focus area. I still have the sliced banana between glass sitting in my freezer all ready to go :) I'm hoping to go for a sharp band going diagonally from left hand side of bottom banana through to right hand side of top banana!

 

Cheers again all.

Matthew, I know you haven't requested a critique on this picture, but I just wanted to give a couple of thoughts. I like pictures of babies' feet (having got 4 of my own - aged between 6 and 14 yrs now!). and I like the composition of this photograph.

 

I do, however, think the impact of it can be increased with a small amount of post processing. The picture as it is seems rather soft and flat. By tweaking the curve on the histogram in post processing, you cam make the picture much stronger by making the darks darker and the lights lighter - it lifts it quite a lot. Also a slight bit of a sharpen helps to accentuate those creases in both Aiden's foot and the adult's hand. Also, there are 3 bits of fluff on the toes that show up a bit too well. Using the "stamp tool" (in Canon DPP) or the "clone tool" in whatever software you are using, you can get rid of these quite simply. I know it's only a minor thing but I think it makes quite a big bit of difference.

 

Here is what I came up with after just a few seconds of post processing. I may have lightened the lights and darkened the darks a bit too much for some tastes, but personally I think it works quite well.

Gord, this is a great picture of Maggie and Darwin. I was watching Crufts last night and there was this lovely fluffy Samoyed - the long white coat immediately made me think of Maggie and Darwin, and then when I looked on here you had uploaded another picture of them!

 

I like the composition here. That missing nose somehow sends my eyes in a circle around the picture to meet the nose at the top. I guess that is where I get the Ying and Yang feeling from.

I'll just echo what Silvana said!

 

BTW, what evidence do you have concerning who submits 3/3s? As far as I can tell it's more to do with the way pictures just come up in the rating queue and get mindless 3/3s or 4/4s from people who don't even look at them properly.

Again taken using tilt lens to accentuate hand and front of face.

Any comments would be appreciated. Only PP has been to BW

conversion, levels, sepia tint and sharpen. shame about hair in

front of eye I suppose...

Any comments much appreciated. This was taken using Keleinar 3b

2.8/150 MF lens. I had wanted shaft of light straight across eyeball

but the pesky sprog wouldn't keep still!

Shaun - and you too. Thanks for taking the time to comment. You're right about the (de)focus creating depth to very thin slices. I'm enjoying playtime!

 

I hope that camera turns up soon. Any idea who it was going to first? Definitely nothing here yet. was it just you, Kimberley and I in the UK? I can't think of anyone else on the list.

Alexa, thanks for your feedback on this picture. I'm doing a lot of experimentation with small light sources and also with tilt lens. The tilt lens has been used to deliberately throw some parts of the photograph out of focus while retaining other parts in the same plane in focus. These are very thin slices of banana (just a 1 or 2 mm thick) sandwiched between two sheets of glass. I could have quite easily kept the whole of the image in sharp focus as the subject is essentially two dimensional. But the idea behind defocussing some parts of the two dimensional photograph is to drag the eye to certain parts of the image and to make viewing somewhat uncomfortable I suppose. For some reason I like the discomfort! I see some sort of flow and depth in something that is flat. As Shaun has just pointed out, there is a sort of depth created. Obviously, this won't be to everybody's taste....but I just seem to like odd stuff :))

 

Thanks again Alexa.

 

 

 

 

Gord, mummified makes perfect sense. The horizontal lines look a lot like overlapping wraps of gauze too. Also it kind of reminds me of an old building with lime plastered walls. I keep looking at this and seeing more in it every time.

Great composition and wonderful colours and expression. But agree with M Barbu about the fat black borders. Are the borders intenional?

Great photograph that brings back memories of quite a few years ago, when I accidentally inhaled too much during an evening in The Bulldog and my feet suddenly ended up in the air in front of me and I landed flat on my back on the floor. I got carried out by staff who sat me on a bench in the square outside - next thing I remember was a street performer dancing puppets on string in front of me and I couldn't stop laughing....

This is a different perspective on The Gherkin and makes a nice change. I have never seen the bottom part of it before, so thanks for posting.

Excellent composition and lighting. I like the way the light falls off quickly away from the front of the face. The harsh appearance of the colours makes for a very striking photograph - a refreshing change from soft skin tones and subtle lighting.