Public Servants ( pay phone)

[gahspidy]

I took this in Harlem on a late rainy evening. I like the Church in the back drop of this scene. I included this in my series, but am wondering what you think of it. And/or what you would have suggested. Thanks

[payn817]

Very nice Gary! I love the tones, and the solitude of this. The perspective of the base of the phone adds alot too IMO. This is one of my favorites from the series.

PS. The site is awesome. I remember some of those from the forum, but didn't realize they were yours. Guess I have made a "stereotype" of your work.

[Alison]

I actually really like this! I love the tones.
The Church, I agree, makes for a wonderful bg and balance of composition.
I am, however a little distracted by the bright lights on the right. I want my focus to be on the phone and that marvellous angle you shot it at.
Can you burn the lights and their reflections a little? And maybe crop out that tiny little light on the right of the image?

[HenryatCU]

What a great image, I like the light shed on the booth and the fact that the top of the church isnt lit. The sidewalk and lines on the street really lead your eyes to the phone. I was looking at some of your work and was wondering what you used to make the background black and white and leave the cans in color. That really looks awesome.

henry

[GB1]

Looks great Gary. I like the depth and the architecture of the photo. It is a bit surreal too, don't know why, but I guess most busy streets at night are like that.

Just a suggestion to load the image into the PR page instead of a link, it's just another step lazy viewers (like me) zzzzzz over. But maybe you were getting round the 640 px limit here.

GB

[CLKunst]

Gary,

On first blush I have to say that this fits the tone of your public servant series much more than your previously posted trio of pay phones. The lines are clean and strong with artfully dispersed intersections. Beautiful composition. Need I go on? Nice work.

[dbutler]

What a great image!!! I love how it starts in light but as your eye moves up it goes dark. Very haunting. Another image that evokes the sound and feel of the city at night, after a rain. You almost make me want to go back!

[gahspidy]

Thanks all, for the comments/suggestions.
Payn817 . . .thanks for the good words on the site. i was hoping the base of the phone had not been too close to the bottom frame, but glad you made reference to it.

Alison. . .I agree with you about the lights on the right side frame, and i had meant to clone them out , actually, and now i cannot understand why i never did it. I will get on it.

Henry . . .thanks for the comments. If you drop me a line, be it email or PM, I will explain in detail my technique for the Canscape series. i just don't want to go into it on this thread.

GB. . .thanks for the time. I do not understand what happened with my post here. I inserted the url link so that my site would host the image as it displays here on the page in full size. I did that with my Cityscape 1 thread and other threads with no troubles. This time it only comes up as a link to another page, which i did not want to happen. I could reduce it's size and just post it directly onto the page, but i never had this happen before.

CLKunst. . .glad to hear that from you. I did not care too much for the other set of phones, for the series either.

D. . .I notice how you said "almost" come back. Is it out of the question? thanks for your thoughts on this. You know, since I have known that you had originally come from the area I often wonder what you might feel about a city scene that I may post.
Thanks again

[OldSchool]

Nice shot Gary,

What lens did you use? It looks wide, yet distortion is low. Very nice capture.

I think the composition is great, but there is a little more to do on the PP. The corners seem a little darker (vignetting ??), and there is a sharpening halo . Since you are mapping to your web-site, I suggest going greater than 640 pixels. This makes sharpening images such as these an easier task.

Note that I am traveling the next 5 months and am working off a laptop with a crappy (for looking at photos properly) LCD display. So, I may be off.

Cheers,
Tim

[Seb]

I took this in Harlem on a late rainy evening. I like the Church in the back drop of this scene. I included this in my series, but am wondering what you think of it. And/or what you would have suggested.
Thanks

Gary, this is really neat! I like the darkness of the church tower and the curvy horizon from your wide angle lense. Somehow, it emphasis the dark, surreal nature of the image.
Now, I must agree with Alison that the lights at the extreme right needs to go away. Cropping them out may not be the best thing to do as the phone would get real close from the right edge of the picture. I am thinking that they should be easy to clone out.

regards

Seb

[gahspidy]

Thanks Tim, and Seb
Tim, this image is 680 in height. I keep my vertical images to 680 because it otherwise gets lost in most peoples browsers and i size my Horizontals to 800. When the link opens, you can further increase its size by stretching your browser window as tall as it can get. Sharpening was very slight, and there are no sharpening halos from what I could tell under close examination. Behind the church steeple are more lights from buildings and street and so there is what seems to look like a light/halo around the edges of the steeple. I agreed with your point on the vignetting and actually just came acroos a very good plug-in from "Rosenman" and performed a mild vignetting reduction thanks for your suggestions
Seb, I have cloned out the lights at the right, as I intended to do from the get go. It does look cleaner and less distracting
I still cannot get this image to show on the screen by hosting it through the site, as I have been doing with other pics. So my apologies for having to click on another link to get to it.

btw, Tim, I used the Canon 17-40L glass for this shot.

[OldSchool]

Hey Gary,

It's probably just exacerbated by my LCD monitor. But, on this monitor I see a slight halo on the edges of the church roof line and right edge of the phone pedestal.

Really, I wouldn't worry about it -- I'm just pointing it out. I've found it just tough to sharpen dark single tones sized for web viewing.

It's a worthy image for your portfolio. I like it. I'm sure a print does it proper justice.

Cheers,
Tim

[readingr]

Gary, another exceptional photo, I left this to comment because I was viewing it originally in bright sunlight and the lights bothered me, but now in the dark they look okay to me and don't bother me unless you changed the photo already.

Roger

PS - I love what you've done with the Web site

[almo]

Gary my man, You only get better and better.

This image is a good example of how your photography has matured over the years. I love the concept of Public Servants being ananiment objects. Keep it up man.

[gahspidy]

Tim. . .yeah it is a concern when sharpening these small compressed images for the web. Either artifacts or halos in single tone areas as you mentioned can be hard to avoid.
I have managed to get the url link to work and display the photo here on the page, thanks to help from Photo John. I had to rename this particulair folder as I had used spaces between the words and the url link fills the spaces with symbols, which if there are too many of, will cause the trouble.

Roger. . .glad to hear it, and thanks for the up on the website. much appreciated. Also, yes, the image you see now has been edited to remove the light on the right and eased some vignetting.

Almo. . .A great compliment and very encouraging words.Glad you like the concept of the series. It is rather a different take on an old topic.
Also, I get a laugh when I look at your avatar. You and Sebs avatar always brings a smile to my face when i see them.

[Chunk]

I tried to respond to this yesterday but things were not working well.
This is one of the strongest public servant pics. The version now posted looks just right to me, an improvement on the first one.

[dbutler]

I say keep the lights!! It's one of the things I remember in the city. The damp fog causing those little halos around the streetlamps, making them seem overly bright but so cool.

It's what I love about your images. This one for example: I can just about hear the grit of the pavement under my shoes, and see the little bits of fog swirling around the streetlights, causing those little haloes.