Emperor Constantine

In York today took these, and yes #1 isn't square, all straight from the camera and resized to fit here(I hope!) C&C please.

So nobody has any views on whether these are good or bad ?

Nice enough shots of a statue which will be hard work to get really stunning shots from so it was no easy task you set yourself!

All below prefaced with 'in my view for what it's worth'

As you say the first one doesn't look level - it might be but it doesn't look like it. I'm not sure why you say 'straight from the camera' - why does that make any difference? It needs to be straightened!

The second one - you have too much dead space on the right. All the flow and energy is going left so it needs all the space it can get to accept it.

The third one doesn't work for me at all. There doesn't seem to be any satisfactory composition in it, nothing to hold it all together.

The fourth one does have composition - not quite to my taste, I feel the arm needs to be at a slightly different angle which you can do as there is no part of the body to give a reference point.

The last one has a small dark mark at the bottom that needs to go which is why 'straight from the camera' very often doesn't work! Again I feel the composition isn't quite right, try cropping from the right but the lack of space on the left will constrain you I think. Nice use of a wider aperture and the colours are very nice as in all the shots.

I take it shot it JPEG and resized? I know John does this but I can never understand why someone lets a puny chip process their image in preference to using a powerful PC. It takes a little longer but I find that almost every image needs some adjustments so another step to convert the RAW image is no burden at all. You might be surprised how much difference some small changes will make to the overall image and the colours, I know I was.

My own shoot to process rate is way under one in ten so that I only have to deploy this additional time on very few images. If you have a lot to do then SilkyPix for one has a batch mode which speeds things up a lot.

Rereading that sounds very harsh which it wasn't meant to be - forgive me.

Mike

Thanks Mike, that's what I need to know.

I was working around tourists and getting a bit frustrated at times.

When I say straight from the camera I mean NO processing work has been done and wondered what others would do with them, I get lazy a lot of the time and just leave things.

The cropping you mentioned will work and may get done at a later date.

As for the hand shot in mid air, it reminded me of the creation of Adam(?)
form that chapel in Italy (the name escapes me!)

Once again, thanks Mike, I thought nobody had any views and I knew they weren't perfect.

I've been to York so many times I just cant get any inspiration anymore so I think you've done quite well, I think isolating the hands was a good idea, I'll have to try it next time I go The hand against the sky seems well handled given the strong lighting, is that a bunny rabbit he's doing? I would be tempted to rotate it CCW and call it Constantines Rabbit
I also like the sword hand idea but it needs the background throwing completely out of focus, knowing the area well I would say with a telephoto from the other side of the street, something to think about next time you go.

I tried isolating the sword hand but the Sigma 18-200 isn't that fast, that and the strong light meant that f5.6 didn't quite blur the Minster enough. You live and learn!

As for the 'bunny', hows this.

It reminded me of Blake.

Perhaps you could make another trip in the evening when the light is warmer and the shadows more interesting.

G

You are referring to 'God giving life to Adam' by one Michaelangelo Bounarotti on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

That's the one.