First of all, Thanks Michael for inspiring me and giving me tips to get this shot that I am really proud of.
I finally went to my neighbors, and asked if I could shoot their farm equipment that I had seen lying around. The man who lives there owns a logging company that has been declining in the past years, and his family used to own all the land right up to the back of my families house, covering nearly 65 acres. They were a little slow to warm up to me, but once I was polite and explained my school photo project, they agreed and soon became very friendly. I found out that the woman who lives there (who's name I will not release for their privacy, it was the only thing they asked so I must respect that) is also into photography, and enjoys bird photography especially. They are older now, and she has parkinsons, but she still sits in her kitchen with the bird feeder outside the window. I also learned a lot of history about my whole neighborhood and my city that I didn't know before, and the man was telling me stories of when he was a kid (my age, he claims) and was running around in the fields that used to my parent's backyard. He was very proud of all his equipment he had, including his Oliver Tractor, pictured below. He said that he had a wood conveyor belt that was buried in the woods that he needed to get out this summer, and by the end of the conversation he invited me to come back any time to photograph his property. As a thank you for that, I offered to help him if he could ever use it by helping with his equipment or anything around the farm. I also plan to surprise them with a really large print of whichever photo is decided to be best from below.
Please give me some feedback and constructive criticism on these photos, as I likely have the opportunity to shoot them again.
Thanks in advance!
Tyler
Tyler,
Nice job getting permission and letting the neighbors warm up to you. I think we'll need to set up an "old farm equipment" group. As your pretty young (IMHO), and as you go forward I just want to say to please be smart on such activities with people you don't know. Shoot with a friend, and if your sixth sense says something is not right - move on. OK the parent in me is finished. I think you made a good choice to go B&W as the scenes are generally pretty busy and B&W helps out a bunch with such scenes. Getting separation between subject and clutter is important to have strong images. With that in mind I like your placement of the tractor (love the low angle) and cylinder head in their images, but the old truck not so much and I can't figure out the subject in the"Falling Apart Barn". . It looks like there is quite a bit to work on there. A good place to work on composition skills by working the scene till your trigger finger is exhausted.
Mike
Thanks for looking out for me "dad" haha! Thanks for the feedback! I will definitely be back there, maybe soon because the snow might add some imagery to the scene.
Hi Tyler,
Well done you. It is always good to learn about ones home, the people who called it home long before we did and how it became all that we know today. It is also always good to make new friends, and it seems you did both of the commendable things. Well done on offering to help them if and when they need it.
I like the way you have shot and editied the cylinder head. It has a pleasing composition, although I might have removed the white bucket with the logo on it because it is distracting and rather inconguous. I like its tonal range. The tractor and the lorry are both too dark, and that is from the guy who keeps getting people to go to the dark side in these very pages, to gain more pathos, drama, impact, mystery, gravitas etc. Here the dark tones are very heavy, made worse by the highlights being too dark, too. The result is your images have lost their contrast. Also I think the tractor and lorry are too tightly framed. I think framing is always a subject that needs a few seconds to consider. Do I include more of the setting or focus tightly on the subject. Do I go symetrical of off centre? Do I include more sky or floor? Do I tilt, going Dutch, or is this a horizontal image and if so what angle? The decissions go on and on, so taking one's time is a good thing, especially with landscape types of subjetc such as these, where usually time is affordable, clouds etc permitting.
I suspect your computer screen is not calibrated? If not, I strongly recommend and suggest a modest investment in a calibration product. It will be one of the very best investments in your photography that you ever make. It is far more important than upgrading your camera or lenses, which we all love to do. For a small cost you will ensure every photograph you ever edit actually looks like you think it looks. The differences are potentially huge and the cumulative benefit over the thousands of photos you edit in years to come, regardless of which camera you used, will make the investment totally priceless. It will also ensure you get the most satisfaction/enjoyment from this art, more or less eliminating the frustration that having your work look all wrong whenever you see it on any other screen and more importantly ensuring everyone who sees the images or the firms who print your images sees then as you wnat them to. In short, it puts you in control of the edit. Whereas without calibration you just hope you are producing the result you see and never being at all sure. Worse, I can tell you that your hopes will not be fulfilled. You will certainly not be getting the results you can see on your screen as it will be wrong, whatever make and model it is.
If you use Lightroom there are some very good tools to guide you in tonal reproduction. One of the best is to have your image open in the develop screen. Place your curser over the histogram, you don't need to click. Then press j on your key board. Any highlights that are clipping, beyond white, will be highlighted in red and a warning triangle above the highlight end of the histograme, the right end, will indicate you have clipped pixels. Adjust your highlight and or exposure sliders to eliminate the red and then check the triangle. Some times the areas of clipped pixels are so small you don't see them, even red, but the triangle will indicate there remains a problem needing further adjustments to correct. You almost never want clipped white pixels. The shadows will also be assesed and any clipping in the dark tones will be highlighted in blue. Some clipped blacks are fine. These pixels will reproduce black with no detail. But only on a calibrated screen can you assess if the image looks good with number clipped blacks highlighted, or should you increase the darkness or reduce it. In short, if you have a calibrated sceen you can look at the histograme for critical technical info and at the screen for artistic evaluation.
Remember subjects ocupy a place in a setting and the setting is part of the image you make. So consider carefully if you need to minimise or embrase it. I am currently working on an exhibition of classic car photographs, in which I am sometimes shooting scapes which contain cars. This is often much more interesting than just filling the frame with a machine, however beautiful of desireable the vehicle may be.
Sorry it was a long one. I wish you all the best on your photographic journey.
Thanks Ian! Lots of really helpful information. Unfortunately, I can't afford calibration, since I am using a camera from 2006, hoping to upgrade to a 2011 15 megapixel body, and borrowing the nifty fifty (the cheapest of all lenses) because I am too cheap to buy it myself. I have looked into monitor calibration, but the price is too much for me to afford (I am also using a laptop with an upgraded monitor I got free from my dad, an IT manager). I may look into getting it calibrated professionally for now for a more student friendly price of about $80. As for the photos themselves, I probably will be re-editing them to make improvements in contrast and tonality. I do use the lightroom tools to see clipped highlights and shadows, and in all of these I had no clipped highlights and some (probably too much) clipped shadows. The engine is one of my favorite photos, and I did realize the bucket beforehand, but as it was the first time I had met them and was unsure whether to move it or not. I tried adding a slight vignette in post to draw the eye away from that, but I still wish I had just asked if I could move it. Oh well, Live and learn.
Thanks again for all the feedback and support! Have a nice night
Good response, Tyler. Thank you for that. 80 dollars sounds like a lot to have a screen calibrated. That must be well on the way to the price of a cheap calibration unit that you would have for a long time. You will need to calibrate every month or so on an ongoing basis, so I suggest saving up and trying to buy an older model, afte a manufacturer brings out a new one. They all do esentially the same thing. The LR warnings I mention would not likey show a red highlight clipping situation as your images don't have any over bright highlights. The lorry and tractor seem very heavy, almost as if they are underexposed and you have not corrected them, but this is hard to say as correctly exposed files can easily be made to look this way, too. It might even be an issue with the convesion to B&W. How did you do the conversion?
I have just upgraded from a 2006 camera, just last October. So appreciate your situation.
If the price of screen calibration is more like you say then I will definitely be looking into it. I had heard units go for about $800 a piece and used for $300, with one time calibration being about $80 to $110. I edited them all after converting to black and white, so i think it was likely just me being way too influenced by the darkness
I have just googled and an X-rite monkey can be had here in the UK for £109 pounds inc tax. I am not sure where you live but that is about US $160, at today's exchange rate. I did not shop around just one google search and 10 seconds checking out the top of the first page.
I like lots of darkness in many of my images but I like detail in the darkness and a bit of life in the other tonal zones, including the mids, where yours seem a bit congested.
I don't know how you did the convesion to blac and white but the way I like, and there may be better ways, is to use the adjustment layer. This can be found at the bottom of the adjusment screen in Photoshop, next to the mask symbol. Click on the menu and choose black and white. Then you have sliders for each colour in the spectrum. Moving these will brighten or darken the tones in the image representing the ooriginal colours. So, move the yellow slider to the right and the greens and yellos brighten etc. Try all the sliders and you have the conversion sorted. Then of course you can do other stuff libe contrast brighten as seperate processes.
Keep up sending stuff for review. I am sure many will enjoy your work and your progress and we will try to help.
Tyler,
A suggestion for "calibrating" your monitor on the cheap. This does assume you have access to a printer. Start by printing an image. then open your display settings on your monitor and make manual adjustments to Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma until the monitor looks closest to the print. It might be a bit crude but if your way off you'll see it, and then you can adjust it closer to the print.
Mike
Thanks Mike! I think I'm going to try that. I have done the online basic tests ("if you cannot see the difference between these two blocks move your contrast up" type thing), but I realize those are just as crude if not more.