Man with Oranges - comments and critique welcomed (I get lonely)

[The_Traveler]

Man with Oranges

Just testing some post-processing and found that I liked this one.

Early morning in the train station in Yangon waiting to board for the train to Mawlamyaing.

 

[tirediron]

Nice capture Lew; a shame about those fluorescent tubes in the background (you didn't have a rock handy?).

 

[slow231]

i'd say crop the left part of the frame. for a few reasons. first the reflection on the side of the train is distracting. second, getting the subject more off center would give more of a sense of the man traveling/traversing the length of the train. and lastly, the DOF is pretty shallow and isolating the subject here. the part of the train that is in focus draws away from this. imo you don't need any part of the train in focus, it's clear that it's a train in a train station. the angle you took this from is nice in that you can crop so that there is really only one thing in the focus plane.

 

[The_Traveler]

This was much darker in reality and those fluorescents were it for light.
Thanks to magnificent 85 1.4 for the image to start with.
But the result looks exactly as I remember it.

 

[The_Traveler]

i'd say crop the left part of the frame. for a few reasons. first the reflection on the side of the train is distracting. second, getting the subject more off center would give more of a sense of the man traveling/traversing the length of the train. and lastly, the DOF is pretty shallow and isolating the subject here. the part of the train that is in focus draws away from this. imo you don't need any part of the train in focus, it's clear that it's a train in a train station. the angle you took this from is nice in that you can crop so that there is really only one thing in the focus plane.

Yes, I originally thought about that but in 4 x 6 I'd loose too much of the top and the scale.
I didn't like the 4 x 5 because the shape took away from the sweep of the train.
In any crop I'd lose the reflection on the train side that balances the oranges and the lights on the other side so nicely and losing it makes the train boring.

All in all, I decided to keep a slightly defective composition with the man a bit too much in the middle to avoid the other things.
Thanks for looking, thinking and commenting.

Lew

 

[slow231]

In any crop I'd lose the reflection on the train side that balances the oranges and the lights on the other side so nicely and losing it makes the train boring.

IC, i think that's where i disagree. leaving the forward lights unbalanced draws the attention forward of the subject, and that's what generates the feeling of motion or direction. i don't like the idea of balancing with something behind the subject/flow, it stalls the image. the train is boring either way. all my opinion though. it's all in what story you want to tell. it seems like you've already considered options and got the image where you want it, so it works in that sense.