Photography?

[bickster]

Some more from this summer

[blandy]

Taken on my phone. last month

[The_Rev]

All except the first one from 2018: 

 

Snow falling outside New Street station.  December 2017. 

Colourful tunnel at Kings Cross station. 

Waterloo IMAX

 

Waterloo Bridge

Abbey Road studios

"Supercube" art installation, London Lumiere festival. 

Canary Wharf Winter Lights 2018.

Canary Wharf Winter Lights (2) 2018. 

Hillfields, Coventry. 

Hindu Temple, Alperton. 

Selfridges all red for Chinese New Year.

Crystal Palace park, London. 

Quite literally a Waterloo sunset. 

What public toilets look like in Notting Hill. 

Bobby Moore meets the Beast from the East. 

Some lady out running despite the Beast from the East. 

Frozen boats. Beast from the East again. 

 

 

[The_Rev]

All of these taken within the last three or four weeks: 

Leicester Railway Station

 

Corporation Street

Some warehouse down in Deritend. 

And another warehouse just down the street

Town from Deritend

Gatehouse to the Jewellery Quarter catacombs. 

Corporation Street on the day the ice decided to melt.

Little Venice, London. 

Busker, Birmingham. 

 

Busker, London. 

 

Lower Temple Street

Brick Lane, London. 

Warwick Bar conservation area, Digbeth. 

Behind The World's End, Camden Town. 

Ducks chilling, Regent's Park. 

Statue of cow outside shopping centre, somewhere rainy. 

 

 

[bickster]

Some from this weekend. All taken from or in the Museum of Liverpool

[Vancvillan]

On 03/04/2018 at 17:49, The_Rev said:

All of these taken within the last three or four weeks: 

Leicester Railway Station

 

Warwick Bar conservation area, Digbeth. 

 

Love these two - great exposure choice and the flatter colour grade is great.

Three completely unsolicited thoughts on the others that are just my two cents (and vastly overestimating their worth):

1. Watch your verticals on the cityscapes. The parallax is ok if it's an obvious choice not to correct it, but when there's only a bit of it then it looks like an accident (the Leicester Railway one is just a tiny bit off - not enough to feel like it's intentional though).

2. Go easy on pulling the blues - especially in skies. 

3. For the buskers (and similar shots of people), chat to them, ask if you can shoot them, then get all up in their shit. Or at least a lot close with a wider lens. It'd be great to feel like we're a bit more in their space.

Again, apologies for the critique you didn't ask for.  Dig a lot of the shots, thought I'd chuck my thoughts down on the rest.

 

[Rugeley Villa]

Edited April 25, 2018 by Rugeley Villa

[The_Rev]

Another image dump from me, seem to be really enjoying shooting at the moment.  All taken within the last month: 

Disused platform 5 and siding at Moor Street station. Think I took this at about 1am.  I've got a little piece of paper saying I'm allowed there btw. Don't play on the railway kids. 

 

Chesterton Windmill, nr Leamington Spa. 

Central Birmingham viewed from the Swan Centre in Yardley. 

Block of flats at Wembley Triangle. 

Tired looking phonebox in Nuneaton. 

Oozells Square cherry blossom. 

Another one of social media's most played out viewpoints, Primrose Hill in Camden. 

 

The Rotunda

Nelson statue nr St Martin's Church. 

That bull again.  

 

 

And finally a photo I've been thinking about taking for ages.  My job takes me to London a lot (as my be evident from how many photos of London I take) and one of the places where I spend quite a bit of time is in Wembley, we've got an office which is literally next door to Wembley Stadium, I think it's the closest building the stadium which isn't owned by the FA, and I knew you'd be able to see the stadium from across the water of Brent Reservoir.  You do kinda have to work to get down to the waters edge where this view is (which is probably a good thing from a selfish point of view as there isn't a park bench and a litter bin here) and the view is spectacular.  This is looking west too so the sun sets behind the stadium. If I had the time I'd totally go there to watch the sun go down. Alas I'll have to make do with the swan in the foreground. 

Edited May 5, 2018 by The_Rev

[Risso]

I love that one of Primrose Hill, Nays.  Great photo of the skyline, with some nice human interest in the foreground.  Like the starburst lights as well.  Possibly tweak it a bit to make the sky a little darker so the lights stand out?

[The_Rev]

I'm a total novice when it comes to editing images.  I think this is probably more of an inky sky but it might look amateur hour to a trained eye.  

[blandy]

21 hours ago, Risso said:

.... Possibly tweak it a bit to make the sky a little darker so the lights stand out?

I take pictures, sometimes. I’m not a photographer. But this “tweaking” business...it’s cheating, isn’t it?  I mean, I know “art” and all that, but filters, photoshop, blah, blah. It’s no longer a photographic record of a view one you start dicking about with stuff.

#i’venoimagination.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I take pictures, sometimes. I’m not a photographer. But this “tweaking” business...it’s cheating, isn’t it?  I mean, I know “art” and all that, but filters, photoshop, blah, blah. It’s no longer a photographic record of a view one you start dicking about with stuff.

#i’venoimagination.

Photographs have been tweaked since the medium was invented. This idea that changing/enhancing/tweaking a photograph is cheating has only come about with digital photography. Most of the digital techniques used just replace the post processing arts of the dark room, others just do away with need to fit filters over the lens before you take the shot. Photographers were always “dodging and burning”,  processing the negative up or down a few stops, taking double exposures, fitting ND grad filters etc.

The idea that before digital, photography was pure is just a fantasy.

The only discipline of photography where manipulation should be limited and excessive post processing should and is frowned upon is photojournalism but even photojournalists can crop the photo or correct the levels of the image without anyone calling foul. 

A good photo still requires a good understanding of the in camera techniques and the rules of what makes a good image (or even when to break the rules.) Bad technique will still mostly produce a bad photo.

Film photographers always took photos with post processing in mind all that’s changed is that there's a greater scope for correction and more latitude with the images you can make with a single shot (once a negative was produced from the film, it couldn’t be undone).

[a m ole]

the way an image looks straight out the camera is dependent on hundreds of factors anyway. Basics like white balance, ISO, focal length, aperture, shutter speed, the camera models colour processing, the medium it’s being viewed on are all choices (manually by the user or automatically by the manufacturers best guess) that affect the way an image is perceived.

Then there’s the limitations of cameras not being able to capture anywhere near the full range of luminosity and colour that the human eye can see. So an out the camera image is hardy more accurate or real anyway.

unless as bickster says you’re a photojournalist then if you’re taking pictures you’re trying to capture a moment or an emotion, and I don’t just mean arty ‘sadness’, but what you feel that inspired you to take the picture. Awed at the scale of a building, calm at dusk, whatever. Post-production is about making the final image convey that better, when the cameras auto settings didn’t quite do the job.

obviously some people just chuck instagram filters on for the sake of it, but that’s just imitating eithout understanding why

Edited May 6, 2018 by a m ole

[The_Rev]

Yeah, "photoshop" is an odd term now it's essentially became a verb.  Post processing is such a wide spectrum that I think it's important to make distinctions as there is a world between tweaking a few things to make the colours more pleasing to the eye and inserting a T-Rex into a scene.  With the photo that sparked this debate, both shots are clearly people sitting on a hill on an evening overlooking central London but one looks a bit later than the other. Neither are really 100% accurate because even in the first one the camera will struggle to compensate between dark and light areas of whatever area it's trying to capture.

Edited May 6, 2018 by The_Rev

[blandy]

1 hour ago, The_Rev said:

..With the photo that sparked this debate, both shots are clearly people sitting on a hill on an evening overlooking central London but one looks a bit later than the other. Neither are really 100% accurate because even in the first one the camera will struggle to compensate between dark and light areas of whatever area it's trying to capture.

Yeah, it's a good photo anyway. It doesn't need changing. I like that it's a record of what was there at a particular time. I guess making it as close to what the eye sees as possible is one thing, but changing the colours to fundamentally move it away from what the eye sees is where the line is, for me, perhaps?

I'm not objecting to the skilled manipulation of pics, it's just (to me) no longer a record of something, but effectively something else.

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, blandy said:

 

I'm not objecting to the skilled manipulation of pics, it's just (to me) no longer a record of something, but effectively something else.

The literal etymology of Photography is “painting with light” from Latin iirc

Even before digital, photographers were fitting filters, to alter the colour or contrast etc pre-processing, long before the introduction of colour film even.

It’s the concept that photography is actually meant to replicate what you saw that’s wrong, it’s only that if that’s what you want it to be. A photograph is the artists impression of a scene, However close or distant to the reality that may be

 

[AVFC_Hitz]

 

Took this in Rome on Thursday. What do you reckon I could do with this? I'd like to hang it on my wall.

Edited May 6, 2018 by AVFC_Hitz

[a m ole]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Yeah, it's a good photo anyway. It doesn't need changing. I like that it's a record of what was there at a particular time. I guess making it as close to what the eye sees as possible is one thing, but changing the colours to fundamentally move it away from what the eye sees is where the line is, for me, perhaps?

I'm not objecting to the skilled manipulation of pics, it's just (to me) no longer a record of something, but effectively something else.

as I said, in choosing your focal length, your aperture, how long the shutter is open for, how you crop and frame your image, you're recording 'something else' anyway. For one, what the eye sees is a moving image, so do you freeze time with a fast shutter speed? do you slow the shutter down to see motion and let less light into the camera for correct exposure? then you've got unnatural depth of field. Are you only using 50mm on a full frame camera? Otherwise that isn't what the eye sees. Are you white balancing for the shade or for the sunlight? Did you avoid getting the traffic cone in the picture, did you wait for the shitting dog to move on?

Basically, no camera just records what the eye sees, and sometimes what the eye sees isn't what the camera records.

[hogso]

@The_Rev request for more decrepit Nuneaton pics. Sure it won't be hard to find suitable subjects. 

[The_Rev]

Found my mojo of late.  All of these have been in the last week or two: 

Early evening at Willsden Green.  Always loved this building, it's like a tiny version of the much grander stations at Paddington and Baker Street. 

Man who will do anything to avoid driving a car, Nuneaton. Sorry it's not especially grim @hogso

The arches beneath Moor Street station. Digbeth police station off in the distance. 

Ninja training at the Bullring. Wax on. Wax off. (etc)

10 Holloway Circus and The Cube from somewhere up above the Tesla Dealers near Bordesley Circus. Long lens obviously. 

Same vantage point. Custard Factory, Selfridges and the Rotunda instead.  Love the compression that this lens gives.  

A heron being weird. Regent's Park, London. 

A motorbike I liked the look of, somewhere in London. 

Early evening on Livery Street, Birmingham. 

Beneath the arches at Snow Hill station. 

Chiltern Street, Marylebone, London. 

Car Park on Wellbeck Street, Marylebone, London. 

The new moon appearing over Birmingham, last night.