Thanks for coming along & playing this week folks & also for sharing a little about what it was in 2018 that stood out for you, in regards to learning something about photography. I'm going to treat this as more of a conversation, as if we were all sitting at a table together, rather than me judging your imagery in a contest type manner. That may work for you, it may not, I'll apologise if it doesn't, but it's where I am at right now.
I personally, am one who follows an interest wherever it leads me, which at this point is a real switch around in what I capture & how as a result of my photographic interests changing over the last 5 months or so. The love & appreciation of decrepitude has risen to the fore for me & I want to investigate that through digital photography, hand-held 4K & aerial 4K video, presenting this online as a series of videos that explore the places I find & crawl over & through. As a result, I am releasing my full-frame kit & will be using a crop sensor with a couple of lenses, as that's all I need now. I may still investigate the odd spot of macro, but my love of long-exposures has waned & dwindled to a point of fizzling out now, so 2018 has taught me to pursue what really interests me photographically as well as what I mentioned initially in the first post in this thread, where I was fixated on technique, rather than looking at a larger vision of what I personally learnt about photography in 2018.
So, in a nutshell for 2018, in regards of technique I learnt to be able to incorporate wildlife with my long-exposures, but in a much larger sense I learnt that photography is a fickle mistress that sometimes changes her mind & that's perfectly okay! Enjoy her company, wherever she takes you.
Enough about me, on to the brave souls that ventured into this weeks round.
Interesting, Hugh, I will fess up that I never have been keen on the tiny town look, but you did well with this one, it does look like we are looking at a model of a motorway from on high!
Catching the tiny little red car precisely when you did has added to this feel very effectively. The trucks rear lights being illuminated adds a nice piece of interest to the frame. Having the frame not being precisely lined up in the symmetrical centre of the motorway has aded some tension or intrigue to the viewing process, well done!
Interesting that we have headed in opposite journeys, with me going smaller from full-frame to crop sensor! Eventually, I will probably move to an M43 camera, like a Panasonic or Olympus. As I stated above, I am a believer in following wherever photography takes you. It's your journey after all, not mine! Moving to a full-frame sensor isn't that big of a deal, it's not like you're lugging around a behemoth large format camera or the like!
I have seen stunning images taken on mobile phones & M43's, don't be quick to assume that you couldn't accomplish good imagery with whatever camera you have on hand, you can! A little forethought & planning of your image can make most things possible with most cameras.
Interesting, I'm going the other way from you too! I'm actually heading back to using jpg's, with the correct exposure for what I want to express captured in camera, rather than relying on post-production or multiple exposures & exposure blending, etc... so as to get big dynamic range images. What interests me now is working as if I am working with film, which forces me to decide is the image about the shadow details or the highlights & which will tell a story about what I saw & felt most effectively. I have several 35mm film cameras & am itching to get back into the use of them, this is my first steps in that direction.
I am surprised that as a professional architectural interior photographer you weren't already using exposure blending! No HDR program can achieve what you can when you tackle this manually. Last year taught me that it's nowhere near as complicated as I initially thought, it also taught me that I can't be tossed sitting in front of a computer for hours to produce an image that I'm never going to sell, but that's another story, photography taking me where it wants! Your journey is obviously going to be different here, as you choose to do this for a living, so have no choice but to do whatever you can to produce high standard imagery for your clients. Hopefully you are enjoying the luminosity blending techniques.
Good on you for taking on the challenging aspects of lighting for portraiture, it looks like you're doing well with it. A photographic acquaintance accomplishes the most incredible portraits using ages old large format cameras with lenses that are almost as old, huge sheets of film & nothing more than window light! he has been awarded numerous times & even has a collection in the national gallery!
I wouldn't care if this was taken with your phone, an image has to be genuinely interesting & what you have here is engrossing! The concentration, the detail, the depth of focus, framing & finishing are all exemplary! True story telling, as photography used to be before the damned selfie & instagram food porn took it to the wrong side of the tracks!
The feeling that we are but babes in the woods is a healthy & realistic thing, Adam! I suspect you have a highly self-critical eye for your work, which is understandable, as evidenced by your high standard of portraiture that you accomplish.
Another piece of storytelling at play here! I love this frame, I can see the setting nicely through your POV with the framed images on the rear wall, the subject is caught in a moment of thought that looks deep, respectful, caring, concerned & intelligent. If I had to sum it up in one word,
'pensive' comes to mind.
The gear is irrelevant to me. The grain is irrelevant to me, in fact, it adds a certain romantic mystique to the image for me. I have reached a point where it is the image I appreciate & am drawn to, not the clarity, colour rendition or bokeh of it! If an image is lacklustre, I won't spend much time looking at it. Now, that's not snobbery, it's an appreciation of the ability to tell a story through a photographic image, something I will doubtlessly spend my entire lifetime pursuing getting better at & is something I encourage the participants of my Mindful Photography groups to dip their toes into at their own rate or level of interest.
Not sure if they are around any more, but VSCO did a huge range of digital profiles for a vast amount of films that could be used in digital editing programs.
Astro-photography is one of those photography techniques that once you get into it, you realise there's a lot of detail to it, but once you get to grips with it, it's actually easy! Given everyone turns their lights off at a decent hour for you! Well, actually, I think that this is a technique that has a huge demand of post-production techniques being understood, so that you accomplish the end result well.
I hear you with the lack of ability to get out & about in order to enjoy your photography, for me it's for different reasoning than you, but a commonality, nonetheless. When I do get out, it's always to multiple places.
I was floored when you shard with us that you were broaching Photoshop a while ago! Good on you! It was well worth it here, with the end result you came up with, there's a sense of mystery to the blackness & a great sense of depth. I like that you chose to go quite Gothic with your editing here, rather than going for beautiful & every detail being visible all throughout the frame. The end result is a much more interesting image! Bravo!
It's all about the framing here! There's the beautiful layering to this that tells of the long distances experienced between places here. The footsteps leading the eye further through the frame, the strong back-light adding dimension to the sand-dunes, the few trees also taking your eye back into the frame & giving an idea of scale as they recede further back & back. Plus that lovely warm light.
This proves what I have already said a few times already in my responses, that it's all about the image & not the gear! Well done!
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That brings me to the hard part, the subjective part, judging the podium placers!
3rd -
@Apple fanboy for pushing through the pain & fear barrier to evolve his art.
2nd -
@F-Train for stepping into unknown territory with high speed film & discovering that there is a gorgeous rendering with this emulsion as a result.
1st -
@Giuanniello for learning to have his camera with him everywhere.
Over to you
@Giuanniello for the next round & please share more of your imagery with us here!
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