[Leica] Finally exposing myself

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (tedgrant at shaw.ca)]

Greg Rubenstein offered:
Subject: [Leica] Finally exposing myself

Hi Greg,
You could be leaving yourself open to well meaning critique, understand 
absolutely nothing personal.... merely comments about the photographs. OK 
now relax, well you might consider it! ;-) They don't look that bad! ;-)

Critiques below:

> Hello, group:
> 
> After years of periodically ranting and commenting on everything but
> other peoples' photos, I'm finally exposing myself.
> 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/gcr910/
> 
> All shots are with my D-Lux 3. Minimal cropping, less burning and dodging.
> 
> The two "road shots" with the bluebird sky have more than vestiges of
> windshield reflections (please breathe easy; I was a passenger) which
> were beyond my ability to Photoshop away in a less-than-obvious
> manner.

The road shots with clouds are interesting only because of the cloud effect. 
But the road is empty and basically throw away space. Yeah I know the clouds 
are cool, but? Other than that well? I think they'd have been more 
interesting with as we see in the first one a bit of a vehicle coming into 
the frame lower left corner. The extra traffic would've added a touch more 
to the frame either in a motion, as in moving effect. As long as your 
shutter speed wasn't slow enough to create a blur of the clouds. And I don't 
think so because you're driving at them and not across them in the motion.

Same comment as for the second frame... just something at ground level.

Here's a suggestion for the crew if you are going to shoot... "Travelling 
along a highway in the future."  Certainly beautiful blue skies, clouds and 
better with lots of other traffic in both directions making for variation of 
results.

Rent a convertible an use it with the top down! Yep then make some kind of 
rig to fit on the leading edge of the windshield where the roof would 
normally lock onto. Big enough so you can lock a motor driven camera on and 
drive along the highway with nothing more than maybe a super wide lens for 
some frames, stop and because today most folks would be doing this with a 
digital camera do a quick edit to see how the results are.  If they look 
cool go for more then change the lens to another size and away you go again 
triggering the camera as interesting moments reveal themselves as you whip 
along at 60 MPH! WARNING! Just make sure your rigging is strong enough to 
hold camera and mount in place as you speed along.

Biggest pain in the ass with this system? Was shooting film and having to 
stop and change film about every mile or so along the highway. :-( That's 
why it would be cool today with an 8 or 16 gig card digital! :-) 

> The other two shots capture a morning sky with the northeast corner of
> Mies van der Rohe's 900 North Lake Shore Drive residential building on
> the west shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago. Exposed for the light
> behind the clouds.
> 
> Critique, comment or print as bird-cage liners.

Well OK eh? :-)

The two images with the corner of a building sticking into the frame are a 
complete distraction and do nothing for the photos what-so-ever. As you say, 
"the backlit clouds were the attraction." That being the case, wouldn't it 
have been a good idea to stop for a moment or two and make use of some kind 
of interesting foreground against the cloud formations? Or just shoot the 
cloud effects cleanly filling the frame with nothing but clouds? That 
would've created a far better picture simply because the clouds are most 
certainly very effective!

Actually it looks like you could've done that while the car was moving and 
not thrown the frames away with the black mass sticking into the frame not 
doing you any favours for composition and content! Another thing, your 
caption of what the black mass is doesn't do the building any favours 
either. Like if it's of importance as you describe, wouldn't it have been 
interesting to make a neat shot or two of it seeing the building against 
such a beautiful cloud filled sky?

You did ask for a critique didn't you Greg? ;-) I trust you find this 
helpful for the next drive along the highways of Michigan! :-) 
cheers,
Dr. ted ;-)