[matthew]

I'm going through my photos, narrowing down the ones that tell the story that I'm looking for. One of these three won't make the cut:



cyclone


parachute jump


wonder wheel



(it's not too hard to tell – the Parachute Jump photo just doesn't fit. I like it, but even once the colour corrections are done it just won't match the look of the series that I'm putting together.)

[Toad]

Critique? Seems like you have made up your mind already. Let's have at it anyway.

How about the one you through out? I think its the right choice for the reasons you have stated, but its still a nice piece in its own right - primarily because of the alignment of the planes of background and foreground. The selective focus really helps to make the alignment point by showing that the planes are anything but naturally aligned. Nice.

Wonder wheel is the surprising hit here because typically, I would eschew shooting through a fence like this as a poorly thought out and lazy photograph. Not so in this case - its a hidden gem, and I have learned something today about how to compose a shot. Even without the fence, this is very well composed. Whatever you have done here for processing really works - and I would be interested to hear about your technique.

Cyclone. I don't dislike it, but it doesn't grab me either. No matter how many times I look at this set, I always find myself skipping by it. Maybe that is a critique in its own right. Its a very nice piece that I think is actually salable, but it doesn't grab my attention.

This was a pretty successful photo trip, IMO.

[matthew]

Critique? Seems like you have made up your mind already. Let's have at it anyway.

Thanks, and I don't mean to give the impression that I'm not genuinely interested in feedback, and I apologize for having done that. I have (mostly) made up my mind about a broader series, and since I was presenting these three as a set, I don't want to waste people's time and energy they they may put into getting them to be more harmonious. (But for what it's worth, my initial hope was that these three would work together, but I've seen the error of my optimism.)

All of my Coney Island photos so far are simply rough drafts. I've spent some considerable time to polish these to what I want the final product to look like, but I'll be starting over from higher-quality scans for the finished images. So these photos are incredibly elastic: rather than the usual crop-and-clone modifications that can be done with an almost-finished photos – or the yea or nay response to a finished one – everything in these can and will be redone. Colour relationships, tone curves, throw-it-out-and-choose-another: it's all fair game.

I've never worked this way with photos before, but this is how I used to write back when I was in my late-teens short story period. I'd just write until I knew what the story was, and revise until I knew what I was trying to say. Then I'd set that aside and start over from a clean piece of paper.

How about the one you through out? I think its the right choice for the reasons you have stated, but its still a nice piece in its own right - primarily because of the alignment of the planes of background and foreground. The selective focus really helps to make the alignment point by showing that the planes are anything but naturally aligned. Nice.

Thanks very much, and I do really like this photo so I appreciate your taking the time with it. It's certainly one that I'll keep working on, even though it's likely to not fit either the story series that the other two will be in, or the "happy/pretty" collection that will be more for wall art, such as the blue-red roller coaster photos that I presented as a triptych.

Wonder wheel is the surprising hit here because typically, I would eschew shooting through a fence like this as a poorly thought out and lazy photograph. Not so in this case - its a hidden gem, and I have learned something today about how to compose a shot. Even without the fence, this is very well composed. Whatever you have done here for processing really works - and I would be interested to hear about your technique.

The processing is all done within lightroom. Essentially it's a matter of boosting the "Fill Light" control to absurd levels and then using the "Blacks" slider to reintroduce some reality. Adjust the Vibrance, Saturation, and Clarity controls to taste and these kind of hyper-saturated colours come out of it. (I suppose this is a cousin of the single-shot HDR approach, but without splitting the development and merging the results.)

I'm glad that you appreciate the fence, I've gotten some conflicting advice on that element. (From the same person! ) Through-the-fence (or of-the-fence) photos are something that I'm predisposed to, but in this case I fought my natural inclination to get the dividing bar level and square. I like the resulting diagonal, but I do wish now that I had raised the camera slightly to change where it intersects the balloons and lower it slightly on the top Wonder Wheel sign. I think that's an American flag that it's cutting of, and I wish I had included it all.

Cyclone. I don't dislike it, but it doesn't grab me either. No matter how many times I look at this set, I always find myself skipping by it. Maybe that is a critique in its own right. Its a very nice piece that I think is actually salable, but it doesn't grab my attention.

That's a perfectly valid critique, and I appreciate it. Hopefully I'll be able to pull out the blues a little more in the final scan, which can give it some more punch.

The 'tyranny of the series' strikes again – I feel that the Cyclone is too important to exclude from a photo essay on Coney Island, and since this is my best photo of it, it's in. The parachute jump is also very important (more so, really) but it's included in a couple of other strong candidates, so featuring it in a single photo becomes redundant and gives it too much weight.

This was a pretty successful photo trip, IMO.

Thanks for saying so, and I have to agree. I have a few more coming that I like, but basically if I had only my top two or three photos to show for it, I'd still be quite happy. One of my photojournalist friends told me that now I have to go back to see it in different seasons, which hadn't occurred to me before but now seems inevitable.

[Toad]

Cyclone. I don't dislike it, but it doesn't grab me either. No matter how many times I look at this set, I always find myself skipping by it. Maybe that is a critique in its own right. Its a very nice piece that I think is actually salable, but it doesn't grab my attention.

The 'tyranny of the series' strikes again – I feel that the Cyclone is too important to exclude from a photo essay on Coney Island, and since this is my best photo of it, it's in

Exactly, and its a perfect establishing or "title" shot for the series. I don't disagree for one moment with including it in the series - the sum of the parts and all, eh?

BTW: thanks for sharing the processing tips on Wonder Wheel. Very informative.