The Railway Station

LaFoto · Sep 14, 2007

This is an "ancient" old photo of mine from back in the digital-already-but-still-only-compact-camera-and-no-DSLR-times.

In those days, I had to wait for my daughter's ballet lessons to pass and could not go home in between, so I used to go to that railway station and take photos.

A full critique of this one would be very welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Offbeat · Sep 14, 2007

Cool i like it. Reminds me of the winter evenings waiting hours for the train after college.

abraxas · Sep 14, 2007

Nice vivid colors. Would have liked to see some more of the gadgets and gizmos under the train on the right though- seems a to be a little too much dark area. Good lines and comp.

LaFoto · Sep 17, 2007

I see what you mean about the amount of black in the bottom right corner - and before I put the photo up here, I thought about selectively highlighting that part. Maybe. But then decided against doing it, for I wanted the photo-as-is out for critique.

But this place is very --- erm --- un-busy. The real critics have long left the forum, so it seems.

abraxas · Sep 17, 2007

LaFoto said:
I see what you mean about the amount of black in the bottom right corner - and before I put the photo up here, I thought about selectively highlighting that part. Maybe. But then decided against doing it, for I wanted the photo-as-is out for critique.

But this place is very --- erm --- un-busy. The real critics have long left the forum, so it seems.

The evolution as I see it has been from a semi-private, mutually exclusive gallery; to strict moderation (which would have been good for serious critique purposes); to running away in personal indignation; to just another gallery/sensitivity session with occasional puffs of ... I dunno what it'd be called.

The best thing anymore is to go by your own intuition- If it's not right, do it over or throw it away. Post to share, but then again, sometimes others see things you don't. Weird.

skieur · Sep 18, 2007

The problem with this photo is that it is TOO cool, as in too blue. Colour correction is necessary, but it is beyond the range of being fixable by most attempts at postprocessing.

skieur

Tangerini · Sep 19, 2007

I do not think this photo needs color correction. One of its strongest points (IMHO) is how aptly it portrays dusk's color.
I am a bit distracted by the curvy (wall?) on the left side. I can see why you wouldn't want to crop much tighter since you'd either be left with just the corner of the building or lose part of the street lamp... Both of which would take more away from the photograph. I suppose it's just tiny nagging nit picky thing for me.
Overall I really like the composition, the lines, and the way our eyes are drawn into the vanishing point. The mood, and as I mentioned, the ultimate dusk lighting are favorite aspects of my within this photo.

skieur · Sep 19, 2007

Tangerini said:
I do not think this photo needs color correction. One of its strongest points (IMHO) is how aptly it portrays dusk's color.
.

The colour at dusk is certainly not that shade of blue but more importantly the colour temperature of the lights inside a railway car are not that blue either.

skieur

LaFoto · Sep 20, 2007

Well, I have been thinking and thinking again about the "too blue"-critique, which rests on the windows and inside lights of the train car being too blue, and I cannot come to the conclusion that this is necessarily right.

Therefore I went to my original files (those which are SOOC, as it were) to also find out what white balance my little Powershot was set to at the time, and now I know more.

A) This photo was taken on 5 December 2005 (i.e. three weeks before I got the 350D

)

B) White balance was set to "artificial light" (which is not "tungsten" but this other, you know, that is in light tubes). Which should mean that particularly the light inside the train car is the right colour.

C) All other photos taken at the same time (i.e. as night fell, on an overcast, wet day with occasional drizzle) are equally coloured.

D) I apparently never did anything to this photo in Photoshop at all. The original and the one presented here look all the same, other than that this one here is smaller, of course.

I kept staring at the reflection of the orange platform lights on that wall of the rain-shelter (underneath the platform numbers 3 and 4, you see?) and I find that if the entire photo were too blue, the orange would be sort of "blue-ish", but it isn't. Neither is the light reflection on the side of the train car blue, but orange - however other parts that reflect this very blue (surprisingly blue it was, but we get dusk situations of the kind here and there) sky are blue, of course.

I quickly threw together a five-photo collage of other pics taken on the same day in the same location (found them when I looked up the original of this one here), and look:

Only when it had grown really dark the blue cast disappeared (but the white balance got never changed throughout). I think it really was in the atmosphere at the time.

Back in December of 2005 I photographed several "blue hours" and have series that are called just this, just because I was so fascinated by the phenomenon.

What I do see in the original post, though, is the leaning wall on the left - but then a compact digital camera such as a Powershot doesn't have a shift lens ... and my ancient (stone-age!) version of PS still does not feature any means to straighten lens distortion lines.

abraxas · Sep 20, 2007

fluorescent ?

LaFoto · Sep 20, 2007

That could be the proper English term. It reads "Kunstlicht" in my (speaking-German-to-me) EXIF data, though I would still need to find out what my (German) EXIF data call "tungsten" !?!?!? :scratch: Directly translated into English, "Kunstlicht" means "artificial light". Could actually be anything but the sun, right?

abraxas · Sep 20, 2007

Or maybe a candle/fire light?

Possibly scheelite?

Here's a blurb from one of my ghost town pages;

In 1912 Germans came to the area looking for scheelite ore, the ore tungsten is found in. Tungsten makes steel harder and stronger, invaluable qualities during war time. Decades later, a gold vein was discovered and is still mined today.

LaFoto · Sep 20, 2007

Never heard the word "scheelite" before... Wow, all the things we can learn on TPF!!! I really appreciate all this.

Back to my pics, I still think that the white balance is not bordering on "too cool" or "too blue", since anything orange is really orange and not orangey-blue. Everything was slightly wet from the drizzle, so there are strong reflections, both on the roof of the train and on the roofs of the little rain-shelters on the platform as well as even on the platform itself, and this is so because the sky had this amazing blue hue.

I am wondering if my saying so might be declared "being in the defensive" and "not being able to take any negative critique", which it isn't really. This photo does not mean awfully much to me, only was I hoping to find someone here in Critical Analysis to give me a full critique.

To be calling these "too cool" in the sense of "too blue" isn't quite that, and seems fairly subjective to me, for I really tried to OBJECTIVELY look at my photos again to determine where the "too blue" shows in the parts that are NOT blue ... and I cannot see it. Do I FAIL to see it?