DSLR Photography Forum

I've been very quiet for the past week or so as I've been busy with work and had a visitor from interstate staying with me. As well as not having spare time for this forum, I didn't even have time to go and take any photos!

But I made up for it yesterday when I went wandering down to the Fremantle docks with my camera.
I was going down specifically to look at the Maritime Museum, but in the end I never even made it inside! In an hour and a half wandering around outside I managed to fill a 1gb compact flash card without even realising it, so I turned around and went home - saving the rest for another trip.

All feedback and advice appreciated. There are a couple of photos here I have tweaked in a way which I'm not quite sure if it works or not, but I'm sure all of them could be improved in some way.


1. We all Live in a Flying Submarine

The main exhibit outside the Museum is an old WW2 submarine that's up on dry-dock. While this photo is pretty much a rip-off of a photo by Hin Chua (http://www.pbase.com/hinius/image/30356233), I should point out that the Sub is fenced off and there are only a couple of places where it can be photographed without being obscured - so I didn't have a lot of choice. But I did try to at least give a different feel to the photo than his. I imagine there are probably a lot of other very similar photos floating around.


2. Do Not Feed The Submarines

Because the fence around the sub was pretty much unavoidable, I tried to make a feature of it here as I did in a previous photo of the South Freo power station.


3. Sculpture of Immigrants

I deliberately blew-out the background a lot in this photo to make it less distracting, but I'm not sure if the spotlight-like effect works or not.


4. Torpedo

This is one of my favourite shots of the day, but I'm not quite sure why.


5. Submarine Skin

Close-up of part of the submarine hull. Each of those markers would represent one foot I guess, to give you a sense of scale.


6. Art exhibit outside Museum

This art exhibit was made of brushed stainless steel with maps engraved on it and lists of hundreds and hundreds of people who I think have died in shipwrecks. The post work I did on it was to emphasize the light reflected off the exhibit, but I'm not sure if the result really works because it has lost some detail.

Great shots, the second one with the barbwire and the submarine really works for me.

My only complaints on them is the banding in the skies, it draws me away from what I want to look at.

Thanks Bob

Banding? hmm.. I assume you mean a posterisation-like effect? (not banding like when you get a dodgy print-out from clogged nozzles). I can't see any on my screen (perhaps a little when I look really REALLY hard) - the skies look like a nice even gradation to me.... but then my monitor (LCD) isn't calibrated, so it wouldn't suprise me if what I'm seeing isn't what other people see.

Funny - I was about to single out the barbed wire and sub shot as one that "didn't" work for me - funny how different eyes and brains see things differently. For me - there is not sufficient contrast between the wire and sub to make the wire stand out - and I find myself looking through the wire at the sub and being kind of disturbed at it being in such low focus. But that is only my $.02. Feel free to disregard.

I really love #5 - Submarine Skin. The crop is perfect, the texture adds a lot to the negative space surrounding the letters - super contrast, and the dead center composition really works here - (rule of thirds be damned). The placement of numbers right on the upper and lower peripheries of the shot lead the viewer beyond the confines of the picture. Well done!

The only shot that doesn't do much for me is the last one. All are great. I do find the first, and second as tad dark but just a tad. Well done Adrian. These are very good photos.

Kombi.............fantastic work i like all the shots.

#1 is my pic as I just love wide angle shots.........I am not sure however if I like how the sub_ject is lost in the top left, having said that i had bit of a play and I think it lost the effect you were trying to create when I lightened it.... :/

Ignore the banding comment, I am back on my own machine and they look just fine, the banding was on a crappy ass machine at work.

Lovely shots, Adrian, thanks for sharing.

These are my favourites:

#1 - One doesn't see a flying submarine everyday! I find it a bit dark too though, in the shadow areas.

#3 - Very nice, simple capture of the sculpture. The b/w treatment adds to the emotion. Only suggestion would be to move your copyright text to the top of the frame, as it's obscuring some detail.

#5 - I love the glowing numbers and the cracked texture of the skin. Nice!

Thanks for your comments guys

*phew* about the banding Craig... I assume the PC you were using was set to 16-bit colour or something? I really want to get hold of a screen calibration spider thingy and calibrate all my displays though... I'm sure it will make my life a lot easier.

I agree with you Toad about the 2nd shot not really working because of the lack of contrast. The lines of the wire just kind of get swallowed up by the shadows of the sub. I could mask them and give them different exposures I guess, but for me I don't think the image is good enough to justify much more time spent on it.
Also interesting what you say about #5. I tried a few different crops to put the numbering in different places, but still came back to the centre because it worked best.

Russt, I also agree with you about #1. Its one of my faves, but the top left is a bit disturbing to me too. I think it is more because it is too tightly cropped. Unfortunately that's how I took the photo (I was concentrating on getting as much of the sub in the frame as possible). But because the background is so plain, I guess I could stretch it out and easily clone in some new blank sky. I kinda like how dark it is (but I accept that's just me).

Colin and ST, I always think of you guys when I play with the tone curves in photos like #1 and #2 these days.. hehe.. I get it how I like it, then I lighten it a bit to a point where I think others might like it, and then I usually go back and fix it where I liked it originally!
These shots were taken at about 2pm and the sun was still quite overhead and very bright. I had to do other things that day, so was shooting a bit earlier than I normally would. Because of that, there was a lot of glare on the sub and harsh shadows underneath it. Below is the photo I used for #1 as it came out of the camera, quite boring with a very unattractive amount of glare off the sub.
I changed the "Tone Curve Property" in DPP to "Linear", and it gave me the lovely highlight detail but sacrificed a lof of the shadows. I then pumped the shadows up using the Tone Curve, but didn't want to sacrifice contrast. It might be worth spending a bit more time on this image to make it better, but I think dark areas can be good "bait" to draw the viewer in for a a closer look.



Thanks for the great feedback guys

Hey, I noticed nobody mentioned the Torpedo. That's cool (I'm not whinging about it). The cognitive part of my brain tells me it is just the back-end of a torpedo and there's nothing all that special about the photo.. but there is something about it that I can't put my finger on which I really like. I think it reminds me of a music video of a song I like or something, but not quite sure what or why. Obviously it is just me

Great shots.. I visited that place when it opened last year or was it the one before.. can't remember...But I will be in Freo next month .. and must take some pictures.Col

Great job Adrian! I really like those shots. Everyone of them in fact. Personal fav is the first one and the one with the red lettering. I love contrast shot like that.

Sharp, clear and nice composition!

Jerry