Horsie! (C&C)

Zillah

Finally got around to developing some shots I got down in Galway a few weeks ago. After a bit of post processing I have this:


.




C&C welcome. I did some careful burning and dodging, and I tried to use the rule of thirds.


EDIT: Resize.

mike65

Its too square! More seriously the tonal range is rather narrow a bit more dodge and burn is required for me, but I like a high contrst b&w.

Mike.

Zillah

Why is square automatically a bad thing?

mike65

It offends our natural empathy for certain ratios, ie 16:9 is more pleasing than 4:3 1:1 tends to be 'wrong' even if it suits the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

Mike.

Zillah

Well;

Wikipedia wrote:

Studies by psychologists have been devised to test the idea that the golden ratio plays a role in human perception of beauty. They are, at best, inconclusive.

elven

I think some subjects do actually work very well square. I like this one, but feel that it's included too much of the bland sky and the landscape format would have avoided that. First impression, I do like it, with the use of DOf, the framing and the unusual angle, but I'd also like to see some blacks and whites rather than greys in the background there. Obviously I haven't seen the original but it seems a bit muddy.

Zillah

Well, if I cut out a bit more of the sky/hills, that also means chopping off the top of the horses head, including its ears. I'll try some fiddling around.

elven

Oh and P.S. please post pictures in threads with 600px longest side... I don't use mozilla and I don't want to have to faff about with plugins and stuff either, it'd be nice if I could see the whole thing without scrolling

elven

I know and the bit I like is the hair at the top. It might just be one of those 'oh well, I'll know better next time' things...

rymus

resize for the web if you please. Even on 2mbit broadband that took a while to load.

Zillah

What resolution do you people have your desktops that you have to scroll? Mine is 1280x1024.


Anyway, heres a smaller cropped and more contrasty version.





And theres no way that image should take more than one or two seconds on a 2meg connection, it must be the host (imageshack). I'll upload a smaller version of the original.

Morlar

I like the composition - the square shape doesnt bother me, I can understand if more and more shots were that way that it could get annoying but for this one it seems to suit it just fine.

I would agree with what elven said about darker areas to make it a stronger image (maybe try playing around with the burn tool in ps). Also if you have access to photoshop the unsharp mask on the closest horse could give it more definition. I find that if you drag a very tall rectangle top to bottom about an inch across covering the area of the eye - then use the unsharp mask on that selection it gives the impression of a very tight DOF which can improve some shots.
Still a cool composition and a great capture.
I

Zillah

If anyone would like to implement their suggestions, heres the original image, a little smaller so it'll fit.

(for the record, they were chasing me... )

captain P

I love the framing, but i agree, a little more contrast is needed. Other than that it looks good, the square image works fine for me. My original thought was that you had made the Horses pose like people would... (if that makes sense)

mike65

Agh no wonder the tonal range was poor, I thought it was a proper b&w image.

Mike.

elven

I'm on 1024x768 which is pretty standard, as far as I know. I prefer my icons not to be tiny.

Why are people so snippy? You make a polite request, and all you get is attitude. Ffft.

Fionn

so
whats the problem?
is it the pic or the viewers?
for me personally it's a nice shot nothing spectacular!
ok composition perhaps parts are out of focus ..or maybe i've been at the sherry again!
anyway
bottom line ..if you look for C&C don't always expect accolades from this lot!!!

:rolleyes: