Ripley Castle, Yorkshire, UK, 2 May 2008.

Graeme

Cool shot!

Here's one from yesterday, just before the last flowers drop (Phalaenopsis).
Cheers,
J

Very nice. I'd like to see it from a lower perspective also, just above the water line. Did you shoot it like that by chance? I think I could shoot that very location for a few days several hours each. That scene has a lot of ways in which it could be shot.

Taken on the muslim fisherman island of Ko Panyi

This was 1Ds MK2, shot briefly after sunset. Location was Rajaprapha Dam in southern Thailand, model was posing on the tree protruding above water, I was on a raft to take this picture, using EX550 to fill the light.

Some Canon 1Ds MK3 pics with 70-200 2.8L IS and some Canon 5D with 24-70 2.8L pics.

You guess which is which :-)

here is one from a few weeks ago

cheers

tom

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Shot this yesterday in Bangkok. 1Ds MKIII with 14mm f/2.8 lens

Boris, I love the blurred kicking one. (5D I guess, since it's a wide angle.)

For the grainy ones, did you shoot at high ISO or add grain later?

-ron

Not that recent but it'll do for now.

Coffee shop at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport this morning. 1Ds MKIII with 14mm f/2.8 lens

Click to view attachmentStitched 5D shots.

A picture from a series of athletes I'm shooting for a local high school.Click to view attachment

Bird and Sacred Mountain.

The mountain peak is Machapuchare, 6,993M or 22,943 ft. It's supposedly unclimbed.

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Hhmm! I wonder if I should add this to my Phallic Symbolism series.

20D, 40mm, F8.

From this past week.
1Ds3, 45mm TS-E @ f2.8
Minimal white balance adjustment, no retouching.

Click to view attachment

I can understand, Chris, that you might be trying to portray a quiet scene of eerie calm in the mist, here. But I find the OoF foreground a bit disturbing, and the general composition seems to have too much blank sky area.

The scene needs a bit of drama. Can I suggest a nice dancing girl on the float, like the one below.

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That's quite good.

I completely disagree. The OOF foreground is quite good for this type of "fine art" photograph. My only complaint would be that there needs to be more foreground to anchor solidly the image to the bottom. That would also balance the upper space.

If you have more foreground in the shot, then the out-of-focus nature of the foreground would distract the eye even more.

I don't see anything necessarily arty about OoF areas in the foreground. It just looks like bad technique to me.

On the other hand, some folks think that an entire image that is seriously and deliberately OoF can be artistic. Everyone's entitled to an opinion.

My own view is that OoF areas in the image should not attract the eye. If the OoF area is in the foreground, it tends to attracts the eye more readily, especially if there's nothing else in the image which has a strong draw to compete with it.

However, there are no sacrosanct rules regarding composition. If you like the shot, that's fine with me.

I asked dozens of dancing women to be in the shot but as soon as I whipped out my model release forms they fled back to the disco.

It looks as though I probably have lots of images that are really only suitable for editorial purposes .

Gidday Chris,

Had a look at your website.

Lovely work, lots of colour great lighting and composition.

Cheers

Simon

Thanks, Simon, and likewise on your work. I covet your "eggshell cyc", too!

I know. But go look at fine art type magazines and you will see all sorts of things that distract you, but they are in good magazines. Try "Shots" as an example. Of course "fine art" doesn't just mean OOF or vignetting. It's so, so, uh, vague. A lot of the style of some FA I am ambivalent about. However, OOF foreground is not an automatic show stopper when you are producing FA images.

As an alternative to what you see as distracting the eye further with more foreground OOF, I see it as directing the eye to the real subject, which is the solitary structure. I say this because our eyes look for the focus. If the entire image is OOF except the main focus point, your eye goes directly to it. The OOF area leads the eye in.

Yes. I know. Art is about experimenting with what works. OoF foregrounds generally don't work for me, but there are exceptions. When I see a close-up portrait of someone with sharp eyes but a fuzzy nose, I think the person looks a bit odd. I wonder if the photographer really wanted the shot to turn out like that, or whether it was just a mistake or a limitation of the equipment; ie. light poor and aperture wide using a telephoto lens with a camera that didin't have low noise at high ISO, like some of the early Nikons.

Your point about the OoF foreground leading the eye to the main subject of interest is not convincing. Generally, it's lines in the composition that lead the eye to another part of the image. In this composition from Chris, there's not much there of interest in the solitary structure on the water, so the eye is likely to start wandering and return to the grassy edge of the lake (or river), searching for meaning. That's when the OoF foreground becomes distracting for me and why I suggested (tongue in cheek, of course) a dancing girl on that solitary structure. I would then not give a toss about the OoF foreground.

Of course, there could be other reasons why one sometimes sees these portraits of personalities with fuzzy noses in weekend glossy magazines. Perhaps the interviewee has a pimple on his/her nose, or is just embarrassed about the state of his/her nose; it's too big, or too squat or too small, whatever. The photographer obliges and as a true professional says, 'Don't worry. I'll make it out-of-focus'.

I like the photograph. To me, it's kind of a spooky shot. The first thing I look at is the dock. Then I look down at the foreground, then I look up at the eerie nothing space. Then back down, and then it feels spooky to me. In this case, my perception is aided by the oof foreground. If the foreground was in focus, then it's possible I might have a different perception of the image. Whether my perception was the intent of the photograph or not, the oof foreground provides an interesting experience of the photograph. With the foreground in focus, a different perception may have occurred - no more or less correct, just different.



Steve Hendrix
www.ppratlanta.com/digital.php

Okay! That's an interesting perspective. The OoF foreground contributes to a sense of 'spookiness'. I can appreciate that concept. Perhaps my problen is, I have a natural resistance to 'spooky' ideas. It has to be really spooky to affect me.

"Spooky" wasn't intended. I just liked the lack of horizon and the glow of warm light. To some of the guys who fish the river, they saw the perfect fishing opportunity.

Thought I'd add another...

Canon 5d, 50mm 1.4 prime at f5.6, 1/200th sec, ISO 400 - for those interested in these things:)

This photograph is of a restaurant in Batumi, Republic of Georgia. The water in the background is the Black Sea. Though the restaurant is called "san remo", there's no Italian food, just Georgian.

I guess I like "almost symmetrical" stuff.

-bruce

Now this is the sort of image where an OoF foreground might not matter much, one way or the other. The compositional lines leading the eye to the centre of interest are strong, irrespective of the focussing of the foreground. Perhaps an OoF foreground would even help this image; perhaps provide a sort of symmetrical counterpoint to the tack sharp restaurant, without competing with the centre of interest.

Just for fun, I thought I would add a bit of interest to Chris Brown's image of that solitary deck on the river. I hope he doesn't mind, and if he does, then apologies beforehand. I considered a dancing girl, but thought it slightly inappropriate to the mood of the scene.

Click to view attachment

I can really relate to that. Thanks for the tech info also. I'm a strong believer in knowing tech because it is an essential in photography, much like understanding what different brushes do and the knowledge of color mixtures are in painting.

I'm beginning to wonder about that 50MM 1.4 lens. Everytime I see an image from it, it looks different from anything I can shoot with my 24-70 at 50mm. Maybe it's just me. In other words, does the 50mm 1.4 have a "look" all of it's own, especially when used at f4+ (Since of course it would at 1.4 in specific situations)?

LOL. I would hate a OOF on this particular image simply because I see it as a landscape, where you want as much DoF as you can get. But that's my perspective.

Fine photoshop work too.

Who is that? A Buddhist Goliath?

That is one gigantic monk.

They can increase their size and levitate. You didn't know that? Geeze.

I think you should find a decapitated head image and then float it about 3 feet above teh dock. That should be spooky enough for Ray

Recent car show.

Doug

the 50 1.4 is one of my favourites. It has it's own look, which includes a bit of barrel distortion. It sits on whatever I'm using most of the time nowadays.

And you can afford it after buying a 1Ds3:)

Mike

He's in the tradition of this guy below with huge toes.

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Those toes are attached to huge feet. Is this a better shot?

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Nice!

There are some more here: http://www.revellphotography.com/blog/?p=902

Mike.

Hi Doug,

The 50mm 1.4 is a nice lens but I'm not sure it's "look" is evident in my photograph as everything is pretty much in focus. There is a bit of fancy photoshop work that produced the "look" though, I think. I do know that if I had that 24-70L lens, I would never had taken the camera as it would have been too much to lug around that day

I do know that when I bought the camera, I looked at the "L" zooms and didn't really like the "look" in the viewfinder. Maybe it was the distortion, maybe just the small maximum iris. I sure didn't like the weight and bought all non-"L" primes instead and have been really happy that I did. The 100 f2.0 lens is spectacular. The 24 2.8 is ok...

It's good that we should be capturing images of these gas guzzling machines that have contributed significantly to our current predicament of climate change with its devastating consequences.

Hopefully, in 10 years time such machines will be as obsolete as the LP vinyl record.

If they are not, we're in deep strife.

I think you'd find a decapitated head rather difficult to see at all.

Jeremy

Dear me! This overweight problem is serious!

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I can't even afford to eat after the 1DS3. But if the Sony A900 24MP back comes out at a leaked price of 3300US, I may soon eat again. I might sell all my Canon gear and go Sony (and Zeiss) for less than half the cost of the back!

Try slinging a 1DS3 with a 70-200L all day. My elbow and wrist were sore the next day.

Ray, is that line/streak down the center of the image a camera problem? What is that?

I should have suspected that. They are crafty.