Pinball Wizard

[CLKunst]

Comments and critiques welcomed.

[MB1]

I like the color but I find the foreground a little distracting and you might crop a bit off the left past the tower and bracket.

[gahspidy]

I like your idea of presenting a small scene of the graphics on a pinball game. This is looking good, except as stated already there is a bit too much here causing a busy picture. Isolating the area of interest more effectively will improve. Great idea here.

[Old Timer]

I like this image. And I'm afraid I have to disagree with the crop of the foreground. I feel the continuation of the circular pattern in the lower left and foreground enhances the swoosh effect of the magic carpet. If anything a crop to eliminate the somewhat distracting upper right corner might be in order. All in all a very colorful and attention getting image.

[CLKunst]

Thanks for the input so far guys. Here is a compromise crop based on all of your suggestions. Improvement?

OT - I agree that the swoosh of the ramp accentuates the swoosh of the carpet that's what I was going for. And I wanted to leave enough foreground detail so that you could still deduce it was a pinball machine. Thanks for taking the time to look and comment.

Gary and MB - I agree some of the foreground was a distraction, do you think this crop addresses it sufficiently? Thanks for the critical analysis, that's why I post.

This is my neighbor's machine which he just had restored. I'm making a poster for his game room based on elements from this machine.

[CLKunst]

What about this one? Comments and critique welcomed.

[GB1]

CL - I view this as an abstract. I think the crop works better as it removes the upper-right side black. There are a lot of things happening but not sure reducing that down would necessarily be a good thing - it is what it is, a pinball machine landscape Good title btw.
GB

[CLKunst]

CL - I view this as an abstract. I think the crop works better as it removes the upper-right side black. There are a lot of things happening but not sure reducing that down would necessarily be a good thing - it is what it is, a pinball machine landscape Good title btw.
GB

Thanks for taking the time to comment GB. I'm planning a re-shoot with this machine now that I have the K10D. These were all done with my old *istD, late at night, without much planning or orchestration. [Actually it was the night my *ist DS broke and I needed to make something come out right or I wasn't going to be able to go to sleep.] My neighbor happened to have the machine open for a repair so I could get right up close to the board and get details without the glass cover in the way.

Right now I'm trying to think about what works, what doesn't and how I can make it better when I do it over. I see these as largely documentary, but I'm trying to isolate the scenes in an artistic fashion and eventually want to whirl this into a fun composite poster layout for his game room. [Early/Late Christmas/Birthday Present] Since it is a pinball landscape it is very busy and cluttered. Perhaps a little selective blurring is in order I've seen lots of talk about that around here lately. I like the results ~ but wonder if it would be effective or just more distracting. What about if I cut the characters out of their backgrounds and just made a collage out of them? I'm up for some experimentation and open for suggestions. :ihih: In fact I think I might already be getting some ideas.

[Greg McCary]

CL, As a teen I spent many hours playing pinball. I love these pictures but the only distraction I see are the bolts. Other than that I love them. Nice idea and I look forward to more of them. And the finished poster as well. Maybe some super close ups of some of the characters?
Greg

[CLKunst]

Thanks for commenting and your suggestion Greg, I will try some tighter shots. With this second shot I saw the girl as being trapped by more than the bottle. She's also hemmed in by all of the graphics and words surrounding her.

My husband wasted a good deal of his youth with these early video games too. He's quite good at it and our neighbor and he have tournaments long in to the night. As a kid I was always fascinated by the details and stories covering the boards on these games so I'm really keen on this as a fun little side project which has nothing to do with work.

[dbutler]

Very cool on all counts!! I love the crazy colors and the busy-ness of it all. Hardly would work for pinball if it were subtle and sedate eh? Tons of energy.

[CLKunst]

Thanks D!
I've missed your perspective in the forum and glad to see you took the time to comment on this one. Those crazy colors are what make me interested too.

[Overbeyond]

CL; I prefer the first posting and I would not be inclined to crop it. But I would try and clone out the black thingy in the top right corner. Very novel idea indeed thats provided great results.
Tom

[CLKunst]

Thank you for your input on this Tom ~

I hope to have a chance to re-shoot this machine this weekend with an eye toward minimizing the distractions. I'm glad you like the approach I'm taking with this so far.