abandoned airport - C&C welcome!

[theregoesjb]

Back to a critique of Photo #1. Guess what I found to be a very important part....the title. Without it I would not have immediately recognized that it was an abandoned airport. Knowing that, however, I am keyed in on a lot of "abandonment" themes in the story of your photo. The red platform (which Craig S points out is a wind indicator of sorts?) has peeling paint. The pole is rusted and the cloth of the wind pennant long gone, and tall grass has taken over the landing field.

In composition, that red platform has given us a direct eye line right to the pole and old wind sock holder. What better line than a pointing arrow! The colors are a nice combination of deep blue sky and various brown tones of the grasses. To improve the image Scott G has done the work of increasing the exposure. That really helps to bring out the detail. It does make the sky a little pale to my taste that prefers the darker blue.

#2 Cropping might get that pole out of the center. Also, if you consider that pole your main subject, I would really like to see more of it. It is a bit far away, I really have to look too hard at it in trying to figure out what it is. If you do return to that spot, a close-up view of the top of the pole and another close-up view of just the peeling boards of the red 'arrow' would be good photo ops.

#2 As a composition I would say that your subject matter is a little vague, but overall that airport makes a very interesting scene, nice eye!

thanks for the in depth critique, really do appreciate it.

I may pull #1 out again and try to do something of an HDR by running the RAW file through the PS RAW editor twice, do one with a similar exposure, and one with more exposure to lighten up the foreground (like scraig's). Layer one on top of the other then layer mask, a friend once showed me this method.

#2 ill try a couple crops, i think the quality of it might be sharp enough to zoom in a bit too.

Id love to work both of these into something better, the clouds were what made this day more interesting for me than other days ive tried to get good pictures at the airport.

 

[theregoesjb]

btw ramber, i see you are in Mass. this is the norfolk airport, about 45 min outside boston, in case you are familier with the area.

 

[SCraig]

... Back to a critique of Photo #1. Guess what I found to be a very important part....the title. Without it I would not have immediately recognized that it was an abandoned airport. Knowing that, however, I am keyed in on a lot of "abandonment" themes in the story of your photo. The red platform (which Craig S points out is a wind indicator of sorts?) has peeling paint. The pole is rusted and the cloth of the wind pennant long gone, and tall grass has taken over the landing field.

You aren't a pilot Having seen so many tetrahedrons, both from the air and from the ground, and having landed at a lot of airports whose wind socks weren't in much better condition than the one in the photo, I knew immediately what they were. Any pilot would have since they are one of the things were are taught to look for in basic flight training.

I love old airports, and would really love to travel around England to some of the old WWII flying fields.

 

[rambler]

Hey, you guys gave me some good ideas for photo shoots and no I had never heard of a tetrahedron before. Theregoesjb, I had not heard of the Norfolk airport. I live north of Boston on the shore and found the following website when I googled Norfolk. There is a grass airstrip in Newburyport on the way to Plumb Island and its National Land Preserve and beaches. The airport has some old plane, I might try to photograph next time. Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Central Massachusetts