Ok, time for a whipping.

[LiquidAir]

For you whipping convience, I have included a poll with this post. Mods, let me know if this use of the whipping post is out ouf line.

To whippers, be brutal. I am looking for gut, instinct reactions here. By no means should you feel obliged to post with your vote but if you have some suggestions, I would very much appreciate seeing them.

Thank you in advance.

http://gallery.liquidairphoto.com/photos/117559135-L.jpg

[pathfinder]

LiquidAir,

I think these kind of images hold limited appeal for many viewers. I tend to like them and I shoot fence posts (http://Pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/2536153-L.jpg) myself so I share your disability:D

The DOF is used nicely.

The Comp seems fine to my unsophisticated eye.

Colors are not too hot or too muted. I might have burned in the edges of the image a bit to keep the viewer's eye from wandering off the page.

I gave you a "B"

[Nikolai]

To whippers, be brutal. I am looking for gut, instinct reactions here. By no means should you feel obliged to post with your vote but if you have some suggestions, I would very much appreciate seeing them.
Thank you in advance.

OK, you've asked...

Pros:

Primary subject (pole) is in focus
Good DOF control :thumb
No camera tilt :winkCons:

Shot looks overprocessed
What that green stuff is doing there in the upper-left corner?
Some grayish/greenish pillar-like blurred object is a distraction
Last but not least: what it the point of this whole picture except being a subject to WP? :scratchAnd, yes, I gave you a B...:dunno

HTH

[LiquidAir]

LiquidAir,

I think these kind of images hold limited appeal for many viewers. I tend to like them and I shoot fence posts (http://Pathfinder.smugmug.com/photos/2536153-L.jpg) myself so I share your disability:D


Thanks for your comments. I have a whole collection of post shots; a few of which I really like. They are such a pure symbol of human attempts to force order on an unruly world that I can't resist taking pictures of them. In my eyes they always bring up the question "who or what was this meant to stop?" and that question leads to many interesting puzzles of human behavior.

[Gary Glass]

I don't find anything in the shot that engages my interest. It doesn't present a narrative point, a beautiful composition, or arresting commentary on form. I understand the symbolic appeal of the subject, but you haven't developed that subject. I want to see why you wanted to take this picture. The picture you took doesn't show me that.

[LiquidAir]

Shot looks overprocessed
What that green stuff is doing there in the upper-left corner?
Some grayish/greenish pillar-like blurred object is a distraction
Last but not least: what it the point of this whole picture except being a subject to WP? :scratch

Actually its a straight up Lightroom conversion to JPEG. The grass was new and it really was that green. That said, I could desaturate it a bit to make it look more "natural"

The green in the corner was probably a tree branch. The 5D viewfinder doesn't have full coverage so I didn't see it when I took the shot. I have to watch out for that. The pilliar was in any reasonable composition of the fence so I had to leave it in. In my mind this was a documentary style photograph so I didn't clone either of them out.

As for the point of the shot, I'll get to that when I answer Gary's post...

[LiquidAir]

I don't find anything in the shot that engages my interest. It doesn't present a narrative point, a beautiful composition, or arresting commentary on form. I understand the symbolic appeal of the subject, but you haven't developed that subject. I want to see why you wanted to take this picture. The picture you took doesn't show me that.

What caught my eye when I took the shot was the fancy brass lock and the expensive heavy duty stainless steel rope on a rusty old post. That, and the fact that someone had invested quite a bit in a fence I had just stepped over. Barbed wire, I get. It's to stop cows. 3/4" steel rope? That's for stopping tanks. Presumably the fence was built to stop cars; maybe the property owner had had trouble with people offroading on his land or something. Anyhow, I am an engineer at heart, so when I see things like this I wonder why they were done. This one struck me as odd.

[Nikolai]

What caught my eye when I took the shot was the fancy brass lock and the expensive heavy duty stainless steel rope on a rusty old post. That, and the fact that someone had invested quite a bit in a fence I had just stepped over. Barbed wire, I get. It's to stop cows. 3/4" steel rope? That's for stopping tanks. Presumably the fence was built to stop cars; maybe the property owner had had trouble with people offroading on his land or something. Anyhow, I am an engineer at heart, so when I see things like this I wonder why they were done. This one struck me as odd.

In this case I'm afraid I completely missed the whole point of this shot. Call me a darn city slacker, but I didn't pay a single bit of attention to those tiny lock and cable...:dunno

[Gary Glass]

What caught my eye when I took the shot was the fancy brass lock and the expensive heavy duty stainless steel rope on a rusty old post. That, and the fact that someone had invested quite a bit in a fence I had just stepped over. Barbed wire, I get. It's to stop cows. 3/4" steel rope? That's for stopping tanks. Presumably the fence was built to stop cars; maybe the property owner had had trouble with people offroading on his land or something. Anyhow, I am an engineer at heart, so when I see things like this I wonder why they were done. This one struck me as odd.

Interesting. Like Nikolai, I found none of this in the photo as taken. It doesn't have much sense of scale. The lock looks tiny, the cable like any other cable. There has to be a reason to look at a shot. You haven't really captured the reason.

[LiquidAir]

You're right. Now that I look at it, there is nothing to indicate scale. The lock was one of those heavy duty $50 brass locks, but for all you can tell looking at the shot it could be tiny. Without the scale the whole thing does look kind of non-sensical. Once I shake my memory of the moment, it looks quite a bit smaller than it really was. I deliberately opened the aperture all the way becasuse I wanted a shallow depth of field, but in retrospect, I think the shallow DoF is at lest one of the factors which make the fence look smaller than it is. I would have had a much better chance of getting my story across if I had shot it from closer up with a wider angle lens and stopped down to f/16 or so.