[pmueller]

This is a detail of an old and ill-maintained gate in Boston near the harbour. I was interested in the yellow ribbon tied around one of the bars, which looked almost like gold. The gate is pretty rusty and clearly not from gold, so the trashiest piece in the picture looks more precious than the gate itself.



I took about a dozen pictures of this scene from different angles, at different appertures, etc. I think I like this one best.

What do you think about it?

Peter

[Dave]

Makes an interesting abstract. Having the yellow ribbon a tad more in on the picture, on the 1/3 line horizontally & vertically would have provided better balance, but that has to be offset by positions of bars, so you've probably cropped to best compromise . Well spotted btw

[pmueller]

Thanks, Dave, for commenting!

All the cropping happened through the viewfinder, but the problem was that the ribbon was on the most left of the bars. Below is a crop from a different picture that I also like, but I think I still prefer the one I posted first.




EDIT:
I changed the file size to below 200K. Sorry about that!

[Rob Barron]

Definitely an interesting abstract in prospect there. I would definitely have tilted my camera to 45 degrees to have diagonals instead of horizontals. Triangles and wedges are much more dynamic than squares and rectangles. That would also have shifted the ribbon into a better position. The other thing is this doesn't seem very sharp. Is it just my eyes or does this seem a touch soft-focused to others? At first I thought it was an extreme wide aperture and differential focusing getting the back bars out of focus but actually the FG bars don't seem that sharp either. I am guessing this was with your nifty fifty which I see you have.

Be interesting to see what others think on the angle factor as I personally always look for triangles of shape or position wherever possible.

Any shots of Boston harbour as a place Peter?

Cheers,
Rob

[pmueller]

Hi Rob,

Thanks! I am not such a fan of triangles, I must say.

Soft focus is an euphemism for out of focus, I guess. This picture is experimental in nature: I focussed on the yellow ribbon to draw the viewers attention to it. Apparently that does not have the desired effect. I did indeed take this picture with my 50mm f/1.8D lens, but I stopped it down to f/11 or so. Exposure time was at the limit of flash synchronization (that is 1/250 sec). I guess there is no excuse for a "soft focus" (neither camera motion nor depth of field) and, frankly, it doesn't look all that soft to mee.

I did not take many pictures of the harbour as such, but I have some. I need to "devellop" them and then I'll show them to you.

[Rob Barron]

The reason I say about triangles and wedges Peter is that these natural draw the viewer's eye along them and so work well as lead lines to whatever points of interest are in a picture. Horizontal and vertical lines tend to work more as dividers, separating a picture into portions.

This of course is still a general principle, not a hard and fast rule.... indeed there are far too many so-called 'rules' that should be called guidelines, e.g. the guideline of thirds! But I think you'll find that most of the time, a triangular formation or composition does add dynamism to a picture.

Look at these three possibilities for placing objects in a picture and see if it makes the point. I am doing this textually here as I haven't got time to put some pictures together but will gladly do so after Christmas:

Option 1:

@ ........@


@........@

Option two:

............@


....................@
...@

Option 3:

...........@
.........................@


..................@

If you imagine those @ signs as points of interest in a photograph, I think you'll see why the composition works better placed along traingular lines rather than square lines.

As I said though, this doesn't work with every picture. But in this case, turning the camera 45 degrees gives you angular lines as well as making squares into diamonds which again tends to be more dynamic. I could explain why but it would take pictures to really show it properly so forgive me if I leave it at that for now. This is a fascinating area of picture composition and is well worth taking a little look at.

Cheers,
Rob

[danpen]

I like Rob's pimp, very original. The greyscale conversion has been done brilliantly, I would point out that he seems to have lost a bit of detail though.

Peter's original has good contrasty colours, I like the texture of the rusty bits and the ribbon does add interest (although I agree it might be better elsewhere in the shot).

[Rob Barron]

Danpen, steady on matey, you are in danger of becoming even madder than me <g>

Cheers,
Rob

Fiona....Shush!

[danpen]

Rob, do you think it's time I sought professional help?

cheers

Dan