Paul Lange
Moderator
With not much to do yesterday we went out for a drive around some of the local villages, some of which are quite picturesque. As a bit of an experiment I though I would upload some of the unsuccessful shot along with the ones I liked and explain about the choices in each shot. I just wondered if it would be interesting to talk about the thinking behind the shots as well. Hopefully others might do the same and I think it could be quite a good resource and source of interest to find out what goes through peoples minds while they are taking the shots and after during any PP.
This is an old run down forecourt in the middle of quite a long country road. It stands out as a small island of almost urban decay. It would have been nice to contrast this with its surroundings but there were some mock tudor houses and modern cars close by I thought they would have not worked in the shot.
While interesting to look at I wasnt happy with the above shot so I tried another few with the chain in the foreground.
Still not quite what I wanted so I went back to the original angle but with a bit of chain in. Black and white seemed to be best as the colours just distracted and done nothing for the composition. In the Nikon software you can get quite a good look by reducing the exposure, upping the contrast and shadow recovery tools.
Finally I settled on this image with the focus on the chain and the forecourt slightly blurred. The background was a pain to contend with and I have realised that many shots I thought would work out dont because of the background. In the end I cropped most of it out.
I tried a few close ups of the pumps but again I couldn't find an angle that would give me a clean background even when blurring it out.
Further along I found this nice old car that caught my eye. However the old house it was next to was really run down in a way that wasn't attractive like when you get that decorative distressed look.
Again the evil background was a problem. The car was close by to some piles of junk and a rather unattractive modern fence. The ground wasn't great either. I realised that these would have to be black and white as well.
The pile of wood and the house in the background doesnt work.
I tried cropping it a bit, better but not there really
I changed angle and went for a tight crop as there wasnt anything in it that was worth looking at. Decided not to has a shallow depth of field as it didnt seem to work with this particular subject, there wasnt any particular detail on the car that was strong, it was really the whole car together that looked good.
This is an old run down forecourt in the middle of quite a long country road. It stands out as a small island of almost urban decay. It would have been nice to contrast this with its surroundings but there were some mock tudor houses and modern cars close by I thought they would have not worked in the shot.
While interesting to look at I wasnt happy with the above shot so I tried another few with the chain in the foreground.
Still not quite what I wanted so I went back to the original angle but with a bit of chain in. Black and white seemed to be best as the colours just distracted and done nothing for the composition. In the Nikon software you can get quite a good look by reducing the exposure, upping the contrast and shadow recovery tools.
Finally I settled on this image with the focus on the chain and the forecourt slightly blurred. The background was a pain to contend with and I have realised that many shots I thought would work out dont because of the background. In the end I cropped most of it out.
I tried a few close ups of the pumps but again I couldn't find an angle that would give me a clean background even when blurring it out.
Further along I found this nice old car that caught my eye. However the old house it was next to was really run down in a way that wasn't attractive like when you get that decorative distressed look.
Again the evil background was a problem. The car was close by to some piles of junk and a rather unattractive modern fence. The ground wasn't great either. I realised that these would have to be black and white as well.
The pile of wood and the house in the background doesnt work.
I tried cropping it a bit, better but not there really
I changed angle and went for a tight crop as there wasnt anything in it that was worth looking at. Decided not to has a shallow depth of field as it didnt seem to work with this particular subject, there wasnt any particular detail on the car that was strong, it was really the whole car together that looked good.
