[Charlotte]

What d'you think of this one?

This is The Warrior at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. The lighting caught my eye, with the sunlight streaming thru the clouds at just the right place, i.e. onto the ship + small boats alongside it, highlighting that part of the scene + giving the water a shimmering glow.

I wanted to portray the grandness, power + sheer size of the Warrior as it dominated the shoreline, its fine web reaching high into the dramatic sky.

All C+C welcome, good, bad or otherwise



Thanks for looking

[stepheno]

Ah...the Warrior, first iron-clad battleship. It's a good shot. Good sky and you managed to keep some detail in the shadows. I have a limited print of it in our hall and I always feel miffed when I see the Warrior. It was restored at Hartlepool with a lot of amateur yet avid helpers. Every time I went to visit my parents I would see another stage completed, and then....................when finished, they took it off to Portsmouth Upset a lot of people that did.

[Markulous]

Think the setting with that sky works well and The Warrior nicely placed but I'm not so keen on the quayside/railings. Got any closer, shot over the top of the railings?

[hal1]

I really like this picture! What kind of post processing did you use? I would really like to create that effect on some of my pictures.

[Dabhand16]

You have done very well here Charlotte, technically you have nailed it, and the conditions are challenging too.

I'm with mark on the composition, the FG is a bit of a spoiler for me as well. Over the railings with your Sigma is the shot I'd like to see, but this angle might have lost some of the other elements you have captured so well.

You have achieved what you set out to do, so you must be pleased with the shot

[Dave Canon]

I took a couple of shots of Warrior but did not get a super sky like this. Excellent lighting and nice composition. However, I do think that you should have taken your shots from over the railings and left out the quayside. You could still include a little of the shoreline as foreground, if you have a wide angle lens.

[Charlotte]

Many thanks for all your valuable input, which clearly indicates that the FG + railing definitely detracts. I wasn't sure about this, but now I am, so thanks for highlighting that issue. I did get shots from other viewpoints, but not from this angle + over the fence . However, I might try a closer crop on this one + clone out the fence.

Stephen, you should go see it at Portsmouth ... as you know, it is a very impressive vessel which is lovely inside, much roomier than the Victory (which is extremely cramped) + much grander inside. It's well worth a visit, especially as you saw it 'growing up' They also have the Mary Rose on display, which has largely (not all) been retrieved from the seabed + altho not complete yet, much of it has been rebuilt. It's in a closed display, visible thru glass, as it's still being treated to preserve the wood. Sadly too dark in there to photograph.

Thanks for raising the valid point of the railing, Mark.

Hal, just mild basic adjustments here of levels, curves, selective saturation, + USM. No fancy processing was needed, as the natural light was just right, luckily

Thanks Graham, yes I am pleased, it's my favourite shot of the day Pity the railing spoiled it

Yep Dave, again you're right about the railing.

Thanks all for taking the time

[Rob Barron]

I love the shot itself, the lighting fits perfectly charlotte. I have had a little play to remove the FG, mostly simply by cropping and then a bit of cloning to get rid of the rest. It's by no means perfect but it gives a reasonable idea of what it would look like without the path and railings and I think it shows there is a cracking shot in there. Well done

Cheers,
Rob

[Charlotte]

Thanks Rob, you did a good job there Have to say tho' that it now looks a little odd to me w/o any FG, but that could be because I know what the scene looked like in reality, rather than a composition issue. Any thoughts on this?

What I might try is to clone out the railing + blur the FG pavement, rather than remove it. Does that sound like a good idea or not?

[Dabhand16]

Charlotte - you have hit one of my hobbyhorses there. I think that an inhibiting factor in working on an image is the fact that you know what it was actually like there, whereas those who have not seen it 'as is', and are only looking at an image can perhaps have a bit more freedom to 'improve' it.

The result is, of course completely different to how you remember the scene, so it is natural that you find a pimp to be un-natural.

Sometimes it can work to advantage, but other times it can go the other way.

I've had several of my images pimped with really good results - things done that I would not have thought of because I was there and knew what it was really like.

[Charlotte]

Quite so Graham, so which comp do you think works best here? I won't be offended if you say Rob's, honest

Either way, I think this is one image I'll have to go back to later, to make my choice on the final crop/composition, as I'm not sure either way right now. Will post my suggested edit once I've done it. In the meantime, others' opinions would be helpful.

[Markulous]

Rob's pimp

Think if you went for losing the railing and blurring the pavement it look like, well, losing the railing and blurring a pavement! This is one instance where no FG is, I think, the way to go!

[Rob Barron]

I have to say I think the FG is a big impediment to the picture and when I showed it to my wife, she said 'What is it actually a picture of?' She didn't mean she couldn't see it was about the Warrior, obviously. It was just that it includes so much the ship becomes just a 'bit' of the picture rather than the focal point.

I know what you mean about how you remember it, bearing in mind I know it very well as well as I live close by and have been down to the Warrior/Victory/Mary Rose et al many times. But the oft debated issue for photographers comes up here: Do you want a picture that is a record of the scene as you saw it on the day or do you want 'a picture'. What most of us want is a good picture that stands on its own, which I feel the cropped version is. Reportage photography is of course an equally valid field and provides images that are records of a specific place at a specific time: it is up to you to decide what you want at any given time.

In my humble opinion, this picture is too good to be just a record shot, it works so nicely as an image of the Warrior standing majestically in harbour. I think cloning the fence and blurring the pavement bricks would be a disaster, to be perfectly honest. Let me explain why:

That would effectively look like 10 feet of FG is out of focus but a mile beyond that is all in focus, something that would never happen in real life photography and so will automatically look unnatural. Also, cloning out that fence is harder than it looks: it took me a fair while to remove even the small amount of it left after I had cropped it. To remove it all I can guarantee you'll end up with a lot of repeat patterns from the cloning simply because you have't got enough source areas to clone from.

As I say, I am not saying this because of my crop, we are not talking about my picture or yours, these are both your pictures and you get all the credit for either one. I didn't change anything in my version in terms of colour, contrast, saturation, etc. I only cropped and cloned and that is it. This is your picture and a very good one it is

Cheers,
Rob

[Dabhand16]

I've got to throw my hat in the pimped camp. It has removed the barrier between the viewer and the subject.