On 7 September 2011 09:52, Paul Stenquist <[email protected]> wrote: > I like the light and the contrasty rendering but have reservations about the > framing. > Paul >
That's my impression as well. The free space on the right considered with the cropping on the left makes me wish to see beyond the left-hand border. Modern viewfinders tend to distract us from the composition of a picture, and draw attention into other processes like exposure and focus and matters of camera setup. If you've ever used a plain matte finder in a camera that had no in-viewfinder readouts you'd know what I mean. A meterless Nikon F comes to mind, and the view through my old Bronica ETR with its meterless prism was superlative. Looking down into a Rolleiflex TLR is an experience that every photographer should have. But with current cameras, though, the best you can usuallydo is mentally tune out the information pollution and try to concentrate on the picture at hand. I feel that 135mm/2.5 depth of field should be narrower than this, but I see full aperture discs in the bokeh so I wonder what's killing the softness there, and bringing distracting detail into what should be a field of blur. If you've enhanced the contrast and sharpness on the hats, but done it globally, that would explain why the background details have tightened up. I see you edited with PS-CS2. Had you thought of editing in two layers, to optimise subject plane and background plane along different parameters? Then you simply erase away the too-sharpened background and let the natural or even extra-softened background show through. Regardless of these little nits, it's a keeper that I would have been pleased to call my own work. regards, Anthony "Of what use is lens and light to those who lack in mind and sight" (Anon) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
