David's Project 365

[Rose]

I didn't have time to process or upload yesterday's shot either - as soon as I got home from work I had to be somewhere else... can't think where ? LOL
I'm not altogether sure how successful my efforts were last night either but I won't know till I get the pics onto the computer. I might not end up posting on Blipfoto - but I guess there's nothing to stop me putting something here and saying why I don't think it cuts the mustard.

[davidc]

Day 9 was going to be a bit tricky as I knew that I'd be out catching up with a friend for most of the evening. When I noticed on Google it was the 150th anniversary of the Underground I went out at lunchtime for some shots of the tube. Nothing useful at lunchtime Later on I tried for some evening shots of tube signs, again a waste of time.

It was only when I crossed London Bridge that I noticed just how much light was spilling onto the river. Tried to incorporate the left bank as a leading line into the shot and even managed to get a couple of stars in the sky but otherwise tried to keep focus on the strip of light running across the centre and I think I retained enough detail to keep people looking for a bit. Tried waiting for a train but after 5 mins, no luck and late for my meetup I called it a night.

Considering this was a photo of opportunity I don't mind it too much. I think I'd probably try a different viewpoint and crop most of the sky out, preferably, but the bridge itself cast a MASSIVE shadow and was much more distracting than the sky, hence the current crop.



http://500px.com/photo/22823983

[davidc]

This was an emergency fallback shot I had in my little black book. I had another shot lined up and planned and spent hours alternating between looking after my sick wife and working on the shot but in the end my crappy chinese wireless flash trigger simply stopped working unless I held the receiver 3 inches from the transmitter. Not exactly much point in wireless over that range.

I tried manually triggering the flash, using a 3 million candlepower torch to illuminate... nothing was working and with time running out I went back for a preplanned shot.

Surprisingly this has become the second most popular image I've put online already and the UK crowd have yet to really wake up So although Thursday was supremely irritating, it's yielded something positive in the end...


Starburst - 10/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

http://500px.com/photo/22831621

[Rose]

You're too modest David - these are both great shots ! I love the tones in the river pic but the interest tends to lessen on the right hand side and I wonder if a further crop might be worth trying ? I like the way the sunburst recedes - I'm guessing this is a fibre optic light ?

[davidc]

Yep a cheap £2 fibre optic light. Quite pleased I did most of my tweaking in camera rather than photoshop for that one, so I'm learning SOMETHING at least!

[Mike Farley]

Hi David. I agree with Rose's comments. Two good photos and well done on finding the shot from London Bridge. As I am discovering, it is surprising how inspiration can strike when you need a picture. The light picture is unusual with lots of colour and strong diagonals, so I am not surprised it is garnering the plaudits.

With regards to the night shot, Rose is correct about the lack of interest lower right. You really wanted some kind of a boat filling the space there. I had a quick play with it in Photoshop and cropping it into a letterbox works well as it reduces the amount of empty river in the image. As this is the Photo Sharing rather than Image Critique forum, I have not posted a suggested crop and I am sure that you can work something out for yourself if you want to.

[davidc]

Annoyingly I'd just missed a boat too! Though it'd have just been a watery light trail it would still have filled the gap!

[davidc]

I love the British Museum so headed there at lunchtime intending to photograph the Grand Court, figuring the wide angle 10-22mm lens would really do it justice.

In the end I spent an hour taking photos of this motif on the floor! Tried to focus on the composition so waited for a lot of different people walking in a lot of different directions to achieve this shot. Quite pleased with it, especially since it was so unexpected. I'll be back for the Grand Court later

It was shouting out to be converted to a contrasty mono too.



http://500px.com/photo/22897433

[Mike Farley]

I did quite a double take when I saw this as I have one very similar taken a few years ago, even down to converting it to mono. In my case, I shot it with a 50 mm lens on an APS-H sensor i.e. slightly telephoto rather than a wide angle. The funny thing is that I wanted people's feet in the image, but some did not want to walk through in case they ruined the photo!

It is good to put the words at an angle, but it does cause problems by creating space around them. In my pic, I partially resoved this by not including all the words. This rather frustrated the judge as he wanted to be able to read the whole quotation.

The other strange thing is that one of my potential images for today is based on a similar idea at a different location. I will probably not go with it as I have something else which I suspect will be a better candidate and cannot easily be repeated.

[davidc]

Heh great minds think alike