C&C Please on a work photo

[K24Photography]

I help train other countries in, well you can guess when you look at the picture. During one of the drills we ran on them I took my camera along and got this picture. Let me know what you think and what I could improve upon. Thank you

In response to several people not knowing what this is a photo of, I shall explain:
It's a picture of an EOD tech working on an IED inside a bus. It was partially disrupted by a fellow tech and now he's getting it into a more open position to finish the job. The EOD tech is using a bomb suit to minimize disaster to himself should anything go wrong. It is a training scenario or you can bet there's no way I'd be this close. I hope it makes more sense now.

 

[tirediron]

Despite your post, I really had to look closely at the image to figure out what was going on. I realize even in a training scenario of this sort, you can only get so close to the "action", but this is a very diffficult image to "see". Shot from the side it might have been much better. On the plus side, your monochrome conversion is top-notch.

 

[shootermcgavin]

I could tell the second I looked at it the guy was disabling a bomb... The only other reason someone would wear gear like that would be because they were being chased by police dogs. I think it's a cool shot.

 

[K24Photography]

Thank you very much. I tried my best to get the contrast, blacks and highlights right. It's the first one that I was actually satisfied with as far as post processing to a black and white style.
I probably could have gotten a bit closer, but it was in a bus so it was a bit hard, and I try and stay far enough away from the guys I'm critiquing that they don't know I'm there. It always ticks me off when an instructor is standing over my shoulder when I'm doing work.
I was using my 24-70 lens for this shot on my D300. I guess it gives me an excuse to get the 70-200 that i've been wanting. I still can't justify the price though. So expensive.

 

[Granddad]

Look for a recent model 80-200mm f2,8. I picked one up on Ebay for £500 - less than a third of the price of the 70-200mm. Be careful, the recent models (post 2000?) have excellent autofocus but the older ones are supposedly slower than a very slow thing. I use mine for live dance show photography (dancers moving all over the stage in wierd lighting and no flash allowed) and I'm delighted with the results.

I also got what the photo was about as soon as I saw it. Nice capture. :thumbup:

 

[tingeliM]

I like the b&w conversion too, but I had no idea what this was about before I read the comments. For people like me, I think there should always be a relevant title offered. The photo is clearly document style rather than art that can be interpreted freely, so if there weren't an explanation nearby I wouldn't have looked at it twice.

 

[Granddad]

I guess it's only obvious to people with a military/para-military background... otherwise it could be taken as a welder at work or something from the set of Dr Who and the Cybermen.