Glen Echo Evening

[CLKunst]

Here is another pair of pictures from my area. These were taken at Glen Echo Park which used to be an amusement park from about 1900 till the 1960's when it was closed. Now it is an artist "community" and I teach a photography course here to inner city 7th graders from D.C. during the summer. Anyway these were taken within minutes of each other at our auction fundraiser for the Photo Works community. The director of PW liked them very much and wants me to submit them for consideration for the course catalogue cover for the year. I thought I would share them here and see what the PR community thinks.

Comments and Critiques Welcomed ~ Suggestions Cheerfully Explored

[Didache]

Hi there

I much prefer the first one, not least because of the lovely sky you have retained and the smaller lighted building on the left. The colours look pretty good to me and the whole thing looks sort of "fairy tale". The second suffers, I think, because all the "action" is on the left hand side - I am not sure what you could do about the right side, which is a little dark and uninteresting. Still, the first one is a cracker.

Cheers
Mike

[KenB]

I like 'em both. Only nitpick I have on the first one is the bit of wall in the bottom right hand corner.

[Greg McCary]

I think the composition on them both are splendid. I am gald to see some night shots. I do see something blurry on the bottom of the first, a person walking by? I might would try and clone them out and the building on the left as well.
The second one is fine as is in my book, well done.

[Don Schaeffer]

I prefer the fiirst one. It's gorgeous. I used to live in Silver Spring (Wheaton) from 1952 to 1962 when I went off to grad school. My friends were active in the movement to integrate the swimming pool in Glen Echo--one of the early civil rights movements (I was a poop and stayed home).

[Overbeyond]

The colours in the first one are very calming and you have recorded them so well but I don't like the triangle in the bottom right corner. Also I think it is a little tight at the bottom.
The "movement at the bottom can easily be removed if required.

[GB1]

Cindy - I think that # 1 is very successful. The only thing that bothers me is how close the building is to the bottom of the frame (it may even be clipping a little). Pic # 2, I like it, but feel that there may be too much negative space. The entire right side is empty, and the left side is, while interesting, too far away and small to satisfy one's curiousity. Maybe if it were brighter overall it would have pushed it over the top. Just my opin .. GB

[jkriminger]

I like the composition of number 2...it takes you somewhere..has some depth. I do feel its a little dark on the right. Correcting that does take away from some of the dramatic lighting of the mall though. Because its easy to suggest without a comparison...I have thoughtfully added an example....for better or worse...it was worse

[GB1]

J - Great edit. Unfortunately, now I see the ledge and it bugs me Perhaps if it had some twist, like a colored light illuminating it. Picky...

GB

[readingr]

CL,

Love the first one and the motion doesn't bother me too much, however I would tone down the lights coming from the little building on the left. I love the colours the sky and the atmosphere it generates, someone said fairy tale and I would agree. Shame about the wall, ledge on the bottom right.

The last one, have you considered a square crop for this image to remove the dead space, or just lighten the right side keeping the colours and lighting on the left?

I like both as they are but think they could be improved with a bit more PP.

Roger

[swmdrayfan]

Everyone's weighed in with their critiques so I have nothing of value to add---they've all pretty much covered it. I just wanted to say I like them both.

[CLKunst]

Thank you all for the great feedback! I agree about the curve of the turret that keeps cutting into the bottom edge of both images although I did give it a little bit of thought and tried to make it at least work within the scene. It was kind of a busy night for me as I was helping to manage our auction night guest ticket sales and be the event photographer. The welcome part took longer than I had anticipated. The auction was about to begin and I had promised myself these two evening light shots. I have tried to get them before and been less than satisfied with the results. So I dashed upstairs and grabbed my camera and ran out to the balcony. There was a lovely couple who were standing in my ideal spot so I had to settle with further down and away than I would have liked for the carousel shot. I was losing the light in the sky fast so I had even less time to plan the second shot, I basically turned around 120 degrees braced up and shot the other side of the arcade trying to get as little of the wall as possible but make the curve work with the frame and still include the glass brick wall on the far left. Within seconds the sky went from that lovely blue to deep black and that was it. I had to go back to putting out fires and taking pictures for the event. These have had little if any PP although I cloned out some safety cones that were at the entrance to the carousel. I like to keep them as close to what I saw as possible.

Don - There are many people around here who blame desegregation for the close of the park as it was, even though it closed six years after the park was integrated. The negative press was apparently something the ownership could never come back from. I think it had a limited life span anyway and eventually some accident or other would have been the end of it, amusements are a tricky business. It's much nicer as an artist community! We have painters, potters, photographers, glass blowers, a children's theatre, puppets and dances in the ballroom and bumper car pavillion every weekend. The evenings are my favorite time to be photographing at the park as it looks ghostly and forlorn with all the neon signs lit and the few people like me trailing around to classes and such. The Crystal Pool has been filled in for twenty years now at least and the facade is in quite bad condition. They haven't repaired it's neon so well as in the rest of the park so that when it is lit it only blinks "Cry Po" which I find oddly fitting and poetic. I have a picture of that somewhere from a different evening but can't lay my hands on it at the moment. If I can find it I will post it.

Mike & Roger - I think for the second one to be used for the catalog cover it will have to be cropped to remove the right side so your are right on with your crop suggestions and I won't cry to see it go. Basically these are the way they were presented to the director amongst the rest of the images from the evening so I wanted to show them to all here in the same manner to get the truest feedback.

Tom & GB - It's not clipping but it's REALLY close and it makes me feel uneasy about the scene as a whole. I wondered if it would be mentioned in critique. Next time I'll poke the lovely couple rather than crowd the shot ~ after all they can snog anywhere.

John, Ken, & Greg - Thanks so much for taking the time to respond and offer feed back. I always appreciate your input.

J - Thanks for the edit. I usually mention in my posts to leave any editing to me, but it's OK, you didn't know. I appreciate your trying to show me how you feel it could be improved. While I could just bump up the shadowed areas I don't care for what it does to the image integrity as a whole and as others pointed out there's not much really going on over there anyway. Taking away the deeper shadows only highlights that and takes away the mystery of my distant twinkling lights. Just a personal preference.

[Don Schaeffer]

It's just that your presentation brought back memories.