Santa Pod - 'Run What You Brung' Shots

Prophet

Prophet

Prophet

Soldato
Joined
5 Oct 2004
Posts
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Notts
Here's a few of the shots I took yesterday at Santa Pod. The light was terrible but I tweaked the settings all day until I got some 'I thought' looked OK.

I've changed the levels and colour via Elements and resized using Windows 'right click' plugin. I really don't like how grainy it makes them but have yet you play with any other resizing program.

C&C Welcome.

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Not bad, glad you framed them as suggested. Panning is a lot better, bout the best you could hope for really, as the subject is alittle dull and the day obviously not great.
 
Orange Peel said:
I've changed the levels and colour via Elements and resized using Windows 'right click' plugin. I really don't like how grainy it makes them but have yet you play with any other resizing program.
Click to expand...

...does Elements not have the ability to resize? I didn't think it was that cut down :/
 
Not bad. The only thing I don't like is the composition. There is far too much empty space to the left which has nothing interesting in it. I know you want to observe the rule of thirds but a much tighter crop would work wonders with these shots.
 
Scuzi said:
Not bad. The only thing I don't like is the composition. There is far too much empty space to the left which has nothing interesting in it. I know you want to observe the rule of thirds but a much tighter crop would work wonders with these shots.
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Thats the whole point of the shot. If you remove the empty space you lose the perception of speed.
 
ChroniC said:
Thats the whole point of the shot. If you remove the empty space you lose the perception of speed.
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I'll have to disagree with you there. If anything, a well executed shot with a close crop will convey a greater sense of speed and action.
The blank space looks boring and amateurish. Sorry to be harsh but there's no point in sugar coating it :)
 
ChroniC said:
Why?
1-2 imo look more in motion than 3
Click to expand...

Because empty space is boring and adds absolutely nothing to a shot. It's like useless information, it detracts from what can be a good photograph. A photograph should be about the subject and generally, when the subject occupies about <30% of the frame, it makes for a bad shot. In this instance it makes them look more like snapshots taken on a compact rather than an attempt at capturing the moment.

A slightly slower shutter speed, wider aperture and tighter crop with a bit of play on the orientation would make these shots much better. The panoramic crop just doesn't suit what is supposed to be an action shot.

Technically they're not that great but as I have said, a change in the crop would improve that quite a bit. Looking at the EXIF, they've all been shot at f/8.0 and ISO 400, showing that no real thought went into each shot. I'm assuming that a 50mm f/1.8 was used (please correct me if I'm wrong) in which case, that aperture should have been opened up, the ISO stuck down to 100 and the shutter speed slowed down a touch, using ND filters if necessary. The large depth of field that the f/8.0 aperture has produced in these shots makes them uninteresting.

To summarise, I think the following would improve the shots:
  • Wider aperture, more motion blurred bokeh
  • Tighter crop
  • Bit of an angle of the crop to increase the sense of speed and motion
  • Slightly slower shutter speed if the light allows

All IMO of course :)
I hope this helps.

EDIT: I'd love to have a go at making an example but I don't have photoshop on this computer.
 
I've found with Pod that the track and empty space only looks good if the lighting is right, if the sun is really bright the track is jet black with the yellow line down the middle, which can look awesome especially if the colour of the car reflects on the track... if its a dull day it just looks like bleak tarmac, I don't think that perception of speed is always shown with a big space infront of the subject, a heavily blurred background and very sharply focussed front really give the preception of speed.

My C&C of the pictures:

1.> The car looks really bleak and miserable, i've found that with car pics it can be very difficult to get a "wow" factor, this picture has 0 wow factor. The background bokeh and wheel blur do give some sense of speed but it is overall a pretty dismal picture. The empty space at the front of the picture doesn't do much for it.

2.> A little better, Although in my eyes there a little too much white in the picture, white sky, white GTiR and white walls, which makes things look a little washed out.

3.> This would have been a good one, but its just way to blurred to tell whats going on other than its a guy doing a wheelie, with this stuff its so utterly important to get the front of the subject as sharp as possible, otherwise it just looks like something went wrong.

4.> I'd say this is the best of a bad bunch, simply because the colour makes the image more pleasing than the rest, it does however look pretty noisey, although this is maybe due to compression/resizing.. The black eye air intake in the front headlight looks pretty good though.

5.> Again, theres just too much white and grey there for me, good attempt though, I know how hard it is to get 2 cars which are doorhandle to doorhandle..


Overall i'd say that the major problem (for me anyway) is that the subjects are just bleak boring astras, with the exception of the bike.. The weather also wasn't on your side, to be fair i've done exactly the same some days shooting RWYB, bleak cars + bleak day = not so stunning shots..
Sorry if i've been a bit harsh but im just saying what I think. :D

What I will say, if your after some really good shots, it might be an idea to go down this weekend as its the euro nationals, so all the hot-rods really colourful stuff will be running, i'll be going down anyway to get some more stuff to sell to the drivers/teams :D
 
I just had a very quick play with the first one to sort of show what my idea was. Bear in mind that it only took me a couple of minutes...

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The crop is a bit tighter than I'd have liked but there wasn't much room to play with using the originial image.
 
Scuzi said:
Because empty space is boring and adds absolutely nothing to a shot.
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In this case i think it does, its a race its a track. A cropped photo would take away any sense of that.
Although having said that i do like you example, but i think that because of the angle not the crop.
 
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ChroniC said:
In this case i think it does, its a race its a track. A cropped photo would take away any sense of that.
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I can see where you are coming from but I still disagree. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one :D

That's the beauty of photography, it's open to so much perception.
 
V-Spec said:
imo, empty space on a bleak miserable day, just makes the photo look miserable..
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True i may be generalising, given a better background the track length might have played to its advantage. I.e if it was filled with people, or a nicer day. I agree technically.
I dont mind a good discussion even if people do disagree, it gets the braing going if people can explain there imo throughly, im always open to judging my own thoughts.
 
Fair comment, any feedback is good feedback :) sometimes in my opinion emtpy space looks great, as it does give a big perspective to the track, a shot which is sometimes overlooked by a lot of the press who only shoot at the startline... The thing is - imo for it to work the track has to look great, like jet black and the car needs to be colourful to give it the wow factor.
 
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