[Steve]

As the competition has now closed I thought some of you might like to see some of the other shots that I took especially for this round. I have also given just a small amount of background or info as to why I didn’t chose them over the final entry that I submitted.

The first shot is of a German high speed train (ICE as they are referred to here) stood just outside of the main station. I really liked this shot for the lines leading through the shot and the perspective. Theme relevance was there but I didn’t feel it was as strong as with some of the other shots. The deciding factor however was that the picture screams “Germany” so it would have been obvious who it belonged to.



The same train shot from the edge of a different platform to give a different perspective. Different crop and a different picture but still the same problems with regard to entering it. Again discounted due to that fact and if being honest I don’t feel it works as well as the shot above.



I thought about the different ways Public Highway could be interpreted literally, I sought and found a vantage point above the public and did a series of different shots to show people moving below. More public photographed a high way

Unfortunately I felt that there wasn’t enough “traffic” in these shots taken from that angle but other angles included German signs and stuff again. Also the chaos and lack of focal points had a influence on forcing me to shelve them. It was a very close call though.




I tried a lower angle with a longer time exposure to increase the traffic, but the result was that the subjects were to blurred for my liking.


Then I thought what if I get in the middle of the people to try and make it look like a public road with traffic going different direction. The next two are what resulted from that. Again the location was carefully chosen to remove as many identifiable signs etc that I could.



I quite liked this one but felt it would have been better if captured with an un-blurred background.


And so finally I settled on an idea of a close up of people’s legs moving in the same direction with blur to indicate the motion. The people portrayed the “public” and the motion was meant to represent the “Highway”. This was the best out of about 30 I took. It survived the cull as it was captured without to many bags or crossed legs and had a nice uniform balance of subjects. The larger picture shows better the weather and adds to image overall.



So there you go, that is my journey on getting a shot for the last round of the competition.

[Dave]

Some great shots there Steve, although I think you chose the best one in the end.

I tried shots at traffic lights, attempting to capture peoples faces whilst cars blurred past.....but no good. Only other shot was that of a Taxi queue, where light was falling on cab near the back, so tried to lead eye via diagonals to that point . Also had to convert to B&W due numbers of colours confusing shot. (you can see 2nd taxi driver thinking "what's that ***** doing with the camera ). Anyway decided it wasn't quite on the money :-

[Catdaddy]

Thanks for posting them, Steve - it's a great help seeing why you rejected them and kept what you did.

I like the blurred shot with the guy in the red jacket - would have been an awesome shot if it was either loads more people, or just one.

[petemc]

A great post Steve. Its good to see how you came to the wining shot, and it definetly is the best of the bunch.

[Matty]

very interesting post that gets us(the losers)into the mind and thoughts of the winner(Steve) thanks for sharing! I really liked the legs shot, the rain gives it a just a little more too.

DJW, i like that very much, i think the bus in the background is the only thing that takes away from the shot, the idea works very well!