Critique request

[gopher]

After receiving my "free" tripod I thought I would play about with some long exposures. I already had an idea which was the motorway (I like the long streaks of light) heading towards the steel works at Port Talbot.

The title would be "Road to hell" - all I needed now was a shot to go with it.

Chose my standpoint and made a number of shots at various shutter speeds - in the 1-5 secs range and this is the best of the lot. Slight photoshopping to levels and a crop to remove big chunk of sky.

I'm a bit concerned about the big black area on the left, I'm not if it adds to the shot or not, but wouldn't know what to do about it anyway. So before I go out again any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks

[pic]http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b115/paul_e_davies/DSC_0110.jpg[/pic]

(It has suffered a bit in the resizing)

[-DeaDLocK-]

Good effort!

Just a few points from me:

1) Unless you were going for a specific effect (and I'm too blind to see it), make sure you shoot with a straight horizon. A wonky horizon makes for a wonky photo. Even if you can't take it straight at the time (difficult sometimes when you want a long exposure but don't have a tripod), you can fix the tilt in photoshop and crop of the edges so it looks nice and level.

2) If at all possible, I would've composed the picture with the road being starting at the bottom-left side of the image, with it sweeping towards the opposite corner. This gives the leading line compositional balance. At the moment it starts more than 50% towards the right of the picture, and is a natural curve for you eyes to follow. Trouble is your eyes follow it through the right side of the image and there's an inhenrent imbalance as the left side is ignored.

3) The exposure. The lights seem to be very washed out, with lots of bleed. Night photoprahy works best when the source of the lights are sharp and have well defined lit edges. I appreciate it's hard to have everything perfectly exposed in something like this. I personally would take the exposure levelled on the left side of road and use that as a creative target. You can then take multiple images to expose each light cluster in the image properly and then blend them together in Photoshop.

Also not sure about the black space - but fact is, if there was nothing there to shoot, then there was nothing to shoot.



Top effort, and I'm just nitpicking because you asked me to.

[-DeaDLocK-]

And just to say, absolutely brilliant at actually getting out there **looking** for a shot. Planned and targeted photos tend to come out the best looking.

[gopher]

DeaDlocK, Thanks for your time and effort! much appreciated, and thanks for nitpicking - it's exactly what I was after -

-DeaDLocK- said:

1) Unless you were going for a specific effect (and I'm too blind to see it), make sure you shoot with a straight horizon. A wonky horizon makes for a wonky photo. Even if you can't take it straight at the time (difficult sometimes when you want a long exposure but don't have a tripod), you can fix the tilt in photoshop and crop of the edges so it looks nice and level.

Now you mention it, it's obvious! - I'll fix this one in PS, next time I'll take a spiritlevel! The bridge it was taken on is sloping.

-DeaDLocK- said:

2) If at all possible, I would've composed the picture with the road being starting at the bottom-left side of the image, with it sweeping towards the opposite corner. This gives the leading line compositional balance. At the moment it starts more than 50% towards the right of the picture, and is a natural curve for you eyes to follow. Trouble is your eyes follow it through the right side of the image and there's an inhenrent imbalance as the left side is ignored.

You're right again, and if I had taken the shot from the right hand side of the bridge the road would have filled the dead area to the left - I'll try this next time.

-DeaDLocK- said:

3) The exposure. The lights seem to be very washed out, with lots of bleed. Night photoprahy works best when the source of the lights are sharp and have well defined lit edges. I appreciate it's hard to have everything perfectly exposed in something like this. I personally would take the exposure levelled on the left side of road and use that as a creative target. You can then take multiple images to expose each light cluster in the image properly and then blend them together in Photoshop.

The furnaces I was trying to shoot in the background shimmer and flicker a lot and I wanted to exploit this to install a "fire of hades" effect that the road was leading into, but I can see what you are saying. I may have attributed to this when playing with the levels, but a sharp image in the background may well play better with the theme.

The idea of taking multiple shots and blending is one I hadn't even thought off, never mind considered so thanks for that, again something I will try on my next night out.

I'll post my next effort here which will hopefully look somewhat better.

Thanks again.

Paul

[m1spw]

I hope you don't mind, but I had a fiddle around with the shot:

This is just a simple black and white, with the horizon levelled. I think it looks ok, but someone who is better on photoshop could probably pick out and keep the red of the cars going into the city to give a nice effect.

I did this one just on basic old paint, using the inverse colours button and cropped slightly. I especially like this one as (to me) it looks like the cars going in are a nice pure in that crisp blue but those coming out seem "dirtied" from the city.

Good shots by the way, shame as they do seem slightly blurred? Or is that just me?

[te51cle]

Once you've recomposed your picture by standing 20 paces to the right of where you were and levelling the horizon (which is easier said than done in the dark), I'd also recommend you use aperture priority or full manual rather than shutter priority for a shot like this. To keep any light source such as the car headlights sharp, and the flames from burning out (!), you'll need to use a smaller aperture. Try F11 and bracket around that.

Oh and don't forget that in Photoshop you can cut out the motorway and move it a bit to one side to get rid of the black area...

[_dobbo_]

I reckon a smaller aperture and longer shutter times would help a lot, as it would give longer light trails.

right now you can see the start and end of each light trail, and i think shots like this are better where the light trails extend the full length of the visible road.