1st Ave.

[Coldow91]

I am a big fan of hip shots and thought this one turned out really cool - TMAX 100

Large

 

[abraxas]

Yep. Pretty cool.

 

[TrickyRic]

Hate to be picky but I feel the road needs to be centered in the image, buildings going off to either side. See how a cropped version looks.

Well shot though, it doesn't look like anybody even notices the camera which adds a true sense of nature to the subjects.

 

[Coldow91]

I will try out a different crop Tricky and see how it looks. thanks for the comments

 

[Coldow91]

shameless bump

 

[LaFoto]

Oh dear. THe photo loads painfully slowly ... let me think: what can I do inbetween now? Play a game of Freecell?

ETA: no use. Stopped loading after the first 5 % ... if that happens to most, then that might explain why it has stayed so annoyingly free of replies... :scratch:

 

[Coldow91]

Wow, I had no idea it loaded so slow. I hosted it on flickr which I have always used and I know a bunch of people here use. I guess I will post a smaller size and give a link to the larger size............thanks for letting me know

 

[LaFoto]

Good! Now it is here AT ONCE and to be viewed in one at one glance. Good one for having been taken from the hip, how much straightening did you have to do?

I'm asking because in Hamburg last Saturday I also (for the first time) tried to walk along and shoot from the hip but some of my photos where incorribibly slanted ...

 

[Coldow91]

I only had to rotate it a few degrees. Sometimes they come out slanted but other times they come out nice and straight like this

 

[B-9]

very hip. heh.

 

[Coldow91]

hahahah that's good

 

[GeorgiaOwl]

looks good to me. i don't know why so many are so concerned with everything being so damned symmetrical all the time. who freakin' cares? that's probably why the rule of thirds exists anyway. somewhere alone the line, artists realized they were BORING THEIR VIEWERS TO DEATH! HAHAHAA

 

[tim.bennett]

I like it! Off centre doesn't really bother me. To me the girl in black is really intriguing.

 

[TrickyRic]

i don't know why so many are so concerned with everything being so damned symmetrical all the time. who freakin' cares? that's probably why the rule of thirds exists anyway.

You're right, the rule of thirds does exist as a general rule of thumb when taking an off centre shot, and of course not all shots have to be perfectly aligned.

Sometimes a shot looks better purposefully off balance, sometimes a shot looks more interesting when the rules are broken, but sometimes a shot simply looks more photogenic when the subjects align nicely.

The eye works largely through pattern matching and focal bouncing at a sub conscious level. In this case it's simply more pleasing to the eye for those buildings to flow from the center of the image, it causes us to sub consciously notice the middle of the scene first, which is where the main subject (The girl) is positioned. Kind of like when you walk into a room for the first time and your eye immediately picks out a focal point - Could be the fire place, could be a large portrait, maybe it's even a rug. In any environment though, there's something there that your eye immediately recognises as the primary point of interest, and if the rest of the scene doesn't fit well around that central point, it simply doesn't feel right. Everybody has different views and nobody is right or wrong with those views, this is simply my own. Maybe I have a Feng Shui approach to photography ;-).

Here's a couple of quick crops to help show the difference between eye flow.

At first glance you may not notice, but sub consciously you'll pick up on the the girl first, because the buildings have drawn your eye towards her. This could be the case with the original image, but I find with this crop it feels more natural.

Now look at this second crop. The same alignment draws you to the girl, but then quickly to the other people in the image too. Most of which appear in the first crop, but here they appear more prominent. This is because the 4:3 format causes our eye to bounce around the similar subjects to the sides of the focal point, where with a 3:4 the eye was bouncing up and down. It's all on a sub conscious level so again you may not notice on first glance.

How the human mind works is a very interesting subject. Worth looking into the nature of eye's as a photographer, it helps with those first impressions of an image.

 

[Coldow91]

Thanks for that explanation. I thing that both crops work as you explain and the first definitely draws your eye to the lady in black. The one thing about that is it cuts out the "FIRE" written on the street which I thought was a cool part of the shot............thanks again for the help