Trying to get better (Part 2)

allthingsapple · Mar 14, 2011

Here are the remaining 4 of 7...thanks again--

1.

2.

3.

4.

DogGoneGood · Mar 15, 2011

I really like #4, but it would've been a whole lot better if the entire car would've been in frame. It lost a lot of its "oomph" when you can't see what the car is standing up on.

allthingsapple · Mar 15, 2011

Yeah, I was afraid of that! I saw that too and had one of those "if-only-I-could-go-back" moments. I'm sure the first 3 are considered a bit boring around here, but at least I think I did okay with exposure (I was experimenting with the white balance setting and also shooting in aperture priority). And believe it or not, with #3, I really did dance around quite awhile before deciding how to shoot this in a way that might give it a bit of decent composition. I was in an artist's studio and there was stuff ALL over the floor, so deciding where, exactly, to shoot was a bit challenging. But back to the drawing board for me!

Jeanelle · Mar 15, 2011

I like the first one, but personally I would crop where the brown brush is to the left of the flower. I don't know why, but I just feel that the flower needs to be brought to the left of the frame a little more.

FoggyLens · Mar 15, 2011

I like number 2 the best. Seems to have the best composition IMO.. : ) 3 isnt bad as well. thanks for sharing.

pgriz · Mar 16, 2011

1) Would have loved to have a narrower depth of field on this one. However, your EXIF shows you used f/1.8 at 50mm on a crop body, so you have in effect a mild telephoto, with some compression of background/foreground going on. In this situation, perhaps a wider lens (24 or 28mm), and closer focusing distance would have separated the foreground from the background a bit more.

2) Like the overall feel of this, but the OOF brushes on the left side tend to diminish the impact of the image for me, and the bit of detail at the lower left is distracting. In this context, opening your aperture to the widest value may have helped keep the DOF narrow and focused our attention on the brushes in the mid-plane.

3) Nice. But I’m wishing you didn’t cut off the tube on the right side. I like how you have the focus sharp on the lower right and using DOF to have it blur to the upper left.

4) You cropped too tight. Obviously having a car vertically is unusual, but we’re missing the context. So the photographic choices here include: is the background part of the story or not? If not, then use DOF and a closer angle to blur it and to separate the object of interest from it. Secondly, here again a wider angle lens would benefit, in that you can get closer to the image, have it fill much of the frame, and at the same time use the wide angle lens’s ability to create distance between the foreground and the background.

Note: I do realize that all these were taken with the 50mm lens, and if that’s what you’ve got to work with, then please disregard the suggestions to use a wider angle lens. However, within the context of using a single lens, you’ve got to use distance to subject and aperture with its control over DOF to either pull together foreground and background, or deliberately separate them.

480sparky · Mar 16, 2011

I like 1-3. Not much I would do to change them.
#4 looks staged by the way it's cropped. Either the car is held up by sitting in a special stand, or suspended from the back. Either way, it looks staged/faked. If 'genuine' was the look you were after, you could easily PhotoShop it.