Rate My Photo

[IW84U]

D200; ISO 100; 1/50sec; f16; 200mm

[SS904]

Nice bike.

The pic, not digging the grass and the bike is a bit too centered for my taste. The grass would be easier to take if you used a lot less DOF. If the grass was out of focus, it wouldn't draw attention away from the bike. Maybe bigger sky or have the bike to the left of the frame more to make it look as if it's getting ready to move, if that makes any sense. The pic could be livened up a bit with some color and contrast. CLEAN YOUR SENSOR! Or, clone out the spots : )/

Beat you up enough??? The important thing is that you like the pic.

[Bill_Anderson]

I would have parked the bike on the other side of the road and used the asphalt, not the grass as the foreground. I would also have shortened up the foreground either by camera position or post process cropping.

If those dark spots in the sky are not out of focus birds, your sensor needs cleaning badly. The spots and streaks really detract from the photo. There is a place near me which cleans sensors for $40. Don't let a camera store talk you into a $200+ full camera cleaning job.

[SwiftFF5]

Dan beat me to most of what I was going to say about opening up the aperture to shorten the focus to just the bike, and to move it off center. I do like that you have the horizon well below the center line of the photo. I'm not crazy about the dark sky and limited lighting, though. The bike's colors do come through pretty well, though, despite the dark lighting. I don't mind the grass, and actually would probably prefer it to asphalt (unlike Bill) if it was out of focus and more a sea of green. I would worry that the asphalt would blend too much with the dark clouds to make the whole image too monochrome.

Just my opinion though, you need to be the one to judge it.

[SS904]

Hope you don't mind a little tweaking to your pic, it's a slow morning...

Re-crop, cloned out the spots and added some light. Not great, but I feel it draws attention he to subject a bit more



OK... Overcooked this one, but I like B&W : ). The look doesn't fit a modern bike though.


Alternate crop.

[gpd123]

The B&W appears that (stating the obvious) that you removed color....black and white will need a little manipulation to appear more than flat. I would adjust your contrast and your hues to make pop a little more.

[DUCeditor]

First of all ditto: Nice bike!!!

The points of criticism here are to me valid, but each of them (aside from the comments about the dirty sensor) could be ignored intentionally to increase the power of the photograph. To do so one must understand the basis of the criticism and have a reason for making that choice. I.e., the idea must come before the shutter.

Here is an example where I chose to do this, centering my subject, allowing the foreground and background to stay in focus, and choosing to use none of the design elements typically used to build visual excitement.

Let me first post the photo then talk a little about the reason for my choices...







As in your photo the bike is centered, seen straight on from the side. Yet to me this photo works.

First off, why the straight shot from the side?

The answer is because that, IMO (well, everything here is my opinion. I took the photo!), the side view shows the uniqueness of the bike more than any other viewpoint. By putting it on its centerstand and then centering it the photo, I made the bike totally static. There is (by intent) no visual excitement in the photograph except the bike. Thus I am making the statement that none is needed. This bike makes its own excitement.

This is made more clear when it is understood that this is one of a series of shots I did for a single Ducati calendar. Here are several others to demonstrate the contrast in how this bike was posed...

Note that none of these bikes is seen straight on from the side. Nor are any of these seen against a background that is itself without some interest. No, they are seen as part of a scene, in their environment. Not so the F1.

However, as bland and uninteresting as the F1 photo's background may be don't be fooled. It was not just grabbed at random. No, it was chosen with great care.

The key element I looked for choosing a background for this shot was texture this to highlight the uniquely flat panels that make up the design of the bike.

Too, notice how the color elements of the background highlight the colors of the bike. The red portion of the bike is against a green background, the green portion of the bike is against a red background. Again, that was done with much care, time and thought.


There was one other bike included in the calendar that was also shot centered in the frame and from the side. Again there was a reason for those choices that are connected to the bike itself. Look at the photo and see if you can discern what those reasons might have been...

-don

[SS904]

Originally Posted by gpd123

The B&W appears that (stating the obvious) that you removed color....black and white will need a little manipulation to appear more than flat. I would adjust your contrast and your hues to make pop a little more.

Just an out of the box CS3 B&W conversion with a very slight sepia filter... Not much more could be done with the OP's JPG without crushing the highlights, which I ended up crushing anyway : )...

[SS904]

Good stuff, as always, Don.

[scott]

+1 on cleaning the sensor.