Selection of shots - Any good or just dull!

[mattp]

I'm going to cram a few shots into this thread, because they are all ones that have been languishing in a box, and I'm really not sure if they have any merit at all, or are just disposable snaps.

Here is the first, a very rainy day in London, standing in Trafalgar Sqare taking a shot of the National Gallery:




To keep the city theme going, I took the second in Paris, on the Ile de la Cite:



Number three is back to the National Gallery, with some art loving pigeons. I really can't make up my mind if this was even worth getting the camera out for, but something about queuing pigeons seemed fun at the time!:



Finally, a shot of daffodils in Regents Park taken in Spring. Part of me likes the grainy feel, but another part of me thinks "So what - next!"



The great thing about this site is that I can get opinions other than my mum saying "That's lovely dear". If anyone has any thoughts on any of these shots I'd be very grateful if you could share them with me.

Many thanks,

matt

[92135011]

Shot 1...have people walk down instead of walk up. Wait for the right moment. Peoples backs are not very interesting

Shot 3 could be good, but I would have liked to see more detail in the stone. Looks like some of it have been lost

[mattp]

I think I did lose detail on the stone in shot three - not sure I can recover it now without losing detail on the pigeons. Damn the complications of exposure!

I take your point on shot 1. My thinking was that the flow of the picture led towards the portico of the National Gallery being a point of interest, and I wanted the steps to 'sweep' your eye up to it. I thought on its own this might lack interest, so I wanted people to give it the human factor, and add some scale in as well.

With people going towards the gallery I thought that this would reinforce it as the focus, they are supposed to be going where your eye wants to go, and I guess in a sense you are supposed to empathise with them. If they were coming towards the camera, they would be turning their back on the gallery, the focus of the image, and be fighting against the flow of the steps. I felt that having figures turning their back on the gallery might diminish it somehow. Maybe I need to rethink my composition on this!

Thanks

matt

[92135011]

Dont take my word for it!
We are all learning here. Perhaps I need to change my perception of whats good and not. When in doubt, take more pictures ;)

[mattp]

taking more pictures is always good advice!

[Iamcndn]

They are lovely dear...
:P

I think the pigeon one was worth it, too bad the stone didn't turn out as well as was hoped. It still has a nostalgic feel to it, which I like!
I dont like the daphodils as much as the other ones, its my opinion that b&w doesn't do flowers justice.
I like the Paris one, however I would have liked to see the angle aligned with either the buildings or the lamps, to get a repeating pattern going, or a central angle which shows equally both sides of the road. Just an idea, I'm not really sure how much better that would look.

They ARE good pictures

[Asylum Steve]

IMO is easily the strongest of the group. Good use of bw with strong contrast and tonality and what amounts to an interesting "faux symmetry", meaning you created the illusion of symmetry with similar shaped elements on each side of the frame mirroring each other. Yes, your horizon and vertical center point are both directly in the middle of the frame (normally a no no), but I think in this case it works...

Not only that, but you have an extremly deep vanishing point in the shot, giving it a great sense of depth. The row of buildings, row of cars, paved street, and row of trees combine to take the viewer from the foreground all the way to the very "back" of the shot.

I suppose it is a tad unsharp, but to me that only gives it a little bit of a "old" quality. That and the slight vignetting in the very foreground make it feel like a vintage photo.

Nice...

[walterick]

I like your first and second ones. They both have excellent lines and a sense of depth. The third and fourth seem a little snapshotty to me, I would leave them out next time I'd work more on your architecture or city-scape shots you seem to have a good eye for depth.

Rick

[gahspidy]

I also like #2 as the perspective is so exagerated by the composition, it is a interesting look. #1 is ok but may be better with the persons a bit closer to you on the stairs. As they are sort of lost in front of the lines of the columns of the Gallery. I 'm not sure why, but there is something that I find appealing about the dafodils shot. Keep em coming

[mattp]

Thank you so much for the useful comments. It really is very encouraging to get all your feedback, and I'm sure if I can put it to use it will improve my photography.

Best wishes

matt

[readingr]

I love the contrast in the Daffs and I like them in B&W, I also like the framing showing the stalks which lead the eye up to the flower heads. I would love to see this in colour just to compare the pictures. Are these taken on film or Digital?

The pigeons is great comic quality - however I agree with everyone else about the wall

I like the depth in the street and again I agree with whoever commented about taking it from a different position may have given a better symmetry. But a good shot nonetheless

The Gallery - it might have been better without people to give it a lonely feel with possibly a bit more contrast to give it a starkness OR to bring the people closer to you and either have them standing sideways or coming down the steps but not that far away. It might work with the backs if they were closer ( see Tuna's The Spaniard photo.)

[mattp]

Thanks Roger. In answer to your question, photos 1, 3 and 4 were all taken on Ilford XP2 Super 400 film. I find when I scan b&w shots onto the computer with the flatbed scanner I use, you tend to get digital colour artifacts that do no favours at all, so I usually end up converting to grayscale. Its irritating because the shots always end up looking a bit soft, and the tone can change quite a lot in the process, so I have to do a bit of tweaking to get close to what I was hoping to achieve. To cut a long story short though, this means there is no colour version of the daffodils I'm afraid!

Shot 2 was taken on a colour film, although it had quite a desaturated look that made me think it would work in b&w.

Regards,

matt