Tramore Beach

Mr. Fancypants

And another pic. This one is of Tramore beach, i converted it to black and white and gave it a blueish tint. Also increased the size of the shadow.

mike65

The framing is a little off, I'd crop the beach and the left hand side, so the subject is'nt quite so off centre. Also try darkening the sky it needs "lowering" a little (yes I've just been tweaking it in PSP!) Oh yeah, the sea is sloping towards the right hand side!

Mike.

innisfree

I completely disagree with the comment about cropping it. It may need to be cropped but not to get the subject more centered.
What throws me is the angled tilt of the shot. Without any spontanaity or action in the shot it looks awkward having a tilt. Since it's so slight I'm presuming it was unintentional and just needs to be fixed.

I'm also going to throw a guess that the girl was darkened. Her black profile doesn't fit to me. If she was as dark as that I'd be looking for a strong backlight or overexposed background yet I see just mid-tones there. She just looks pasted in now (unless she was?)

FinoBlad

Nice pic, well done mbroaders

finoblad

btw, did you ever try a black border/frame around a print, for a simple one lookup the "stroke" option in photoshop help, but there are nicer ones

Mr. Fancypants

Jaysus, almost a year after posting and i get a few comments


The picture wasnt staged so, yes it is slightly tilted unintentionally.

As regards cropping it, i think that would lose the whole point of the picture to be honest. I played around quite a bit with the saturation in photoshop to get the colour like that but i didnt darken Sylvaine (The Girl) particulary. Although, i did cheat slightly and elongate her shadow slightly.

I played around with a few borders since and i quite like them. If you guys have edited the picture at all, i would be interested to see it!

Thanks for the comments

mike65

I cant post it but could e-mail it! I used to live in Tramore which is why I clicked it...

Mike.

DadaKopf

I think her being silhouetted effectively makes her the subject of the photograph. The horizon is at an angle and that does tend to interrupt the tranquility of the scene.

Compositionally, I think it's quite interesting - everyone usually places the subject to the furthest side of the direction they're walking in. This is more about where she came from. If ya get me.

Anyway, my only suggestion - and it takes balls and lots of practise - would be to wait for the right moment. A split second and it could have been a nicer picture.

davej

Nice picture except the crooked horizon just kills it for me!

Those little spirit levels that clip onto your camera's hotshoe can come in very handy sometimes, though I appreciate the fact that you don't always have time to line yourself up if you spot something quickly.

davej

FinoBlad

sometimes perfect composition looks too staged,
IMHO this works nicely for this shot

davej

sometimes perfect composition looks too staged,
IMHO this works nicely for this shot

I'm all for spontaneity and taking photo's that don't look staged too.

The simple fact is that yes, it's a nice shot but if it were entered into a competition it would be discarded immediately without a second thought because of the horizon. It would be perceived as being a basic error.

Now you can reply by saying that "it's not all about competitions" and who makes up those rules anyway blah blah blah, and I'd probably agree with you on a lot of it.

davej

rob1891

What's the deal with submitting photshop'd pictures to competitions ... all the basic effects you have are derivatives of the printing process aren't they ... dodge & burn I am thinking. I'm sure you could fix rotation and add a blue filter to a b&w neg and print in colour or something?

So digitally doing these types of things is okay too ... or is it looked down on cause it is far easier than doing it in a darkroom? Do you kids have ethics on how far you'll go to electronically enhance a photo.

Anyway, I did the rotate and it looks a good bit better, why didn't you do it in the first place! I was also thinking the unbroken wave on the left hand side looks out of place and could do with a crop, but it shortens the width a bit and loses the fading cloud ....



I think it's level enough, there are a lot of lines going across that aren't ment to be level that might put the eye off .. I did me best! leave me alone


edit: oh, and it's a lovely photo, I wouldn't have bothered otherwise

Mr. Fancypants

Thanks for all the comments! I fixed the horizon a while ago, didnt spot it when i posted the image up.....I must of been somewhat drunk not to of spotted it to be honest tho'.
I only had my camera a couple of weeks when i took it but it is still one of my favorite pics that i have taken. I certainly wouldnt be entering any of my pics into competition tho'!

innisfree

Originally posted by DadaKopf
I think her being silhouetted effectively makes her the subject of the photograph.

Of course, and I was not suggesting otherwise (if yours is a comment on mine). The starkness of the black just looked unnatural to me compared to the lighting from behind. The sun is out of shot yes, but I would have thought with a siloutte that strong, quite a bright sun would be required giving more glare on the sea than their seems to be. Just an observation