A nice set, #5 is my favourite, purely because he's wearing an authentic-looking helmet. It looks a bit wrong to my eyes seeing modern full-faced helmets and Nomex overalls with old cars (or bikes for that matter). Interesting that it's also the only one you have done a mono conversion on.

I also really like #4, but I've no doubt been influenced by the very clever and amusing title.

I think the first one would look better with a touch of colour in the sky.

Colour for me too. Crop a bit off the top (16:9?) and desaturate a bit, try and get some highlights back.

I used to just crop to what I thought looked best, but now use standard ratios almost exclusively. I use 16:9 a lot, mainly due to constraints with where I shoot a lot of my images, but also because I like it. However, I also think that people have become conditioned to the format because of modern monitors and TV's. I've only sold two prints that weren't 16:9, one a totally random crop and one that was 2:1, which I also use quite often. 4:3 is quite close to square, and I find it sometimes looks a bit unbalanced. I prefer 1:1.

I'd like to experiment more with 1:1, though it's become a bit trendy with Instagram etc. One of the reasons I want a Flucard is to use my K3 and a tablet as a sort of "Live-view" for my Yashica, to see what images look like in 1:1 before shooting off expensive film.

Of the images you have posted here, Andrew, the 1:1 version is the one I like most, but different scenes probably suit different formats.

Thanks for sharing, Gary. I was a bit surprised (and impressed) that all the editing was done in Lightroom, and none in PS.

I'b be happy to explain my methods, some of which perhaps have relevance for landscape photography (ie getting rid of haze).

I and I am sure many others would be interested in how you go about capturing and processing concert shots with limited or mixed lighting, huge dynamic range etc.

Working in an industry where natural talent is actually pretty rare, I've always believed that talent can be learned; I've seen it happen through my experiences in training. It depends almost exclusively on the individual's ability to assimilate information and to learn from experience, together with at least a little innate natural aptitude (hand-eye coordination in this case). Likewise, I think a great photographer can have a natural talent, or learn it. A good example is a work colleague of mine, who bought a D7100 (his first ever camera), and initially was producing, (by his own admission, an opinion I quietly agreed with), complete rubbish. At work one day, he started asking me about how to improve his photography, and I gave him a few pointers on "rules", exposure etc, pointed him at a few websites, and lent him a book. A month or two later, we were working together again, and he showed me a load of images that totally blew me away. Of course, he may have just had a natural talent without the knowledge needed to express it, or he may just be someone who picks things up quickly. Possibly a combination of both.

I use Enfuse sometimes, it's an excellent program and quite simple to use. Not tried focus stacking, but it's now my default program for HDR. It's a donationware product, so you can pay as little as you want for the program, I thought it was a real bargain at the 3 Euros I paid...This image would wold not be possible without using hdr, due to the huge dynamic range from bright sky to shadows inside the aircraft.

What colour space are you saving the images in, or if shooting Jpeg, what colour profile are you using on the camera? Adobe RGB will look washed out in Windows Photo Viewer. For display on the web, or in the photo viewer, they need to be saved in sRGB.

To the contrary, I don't think it's a joke at all. Apart from Ansell Adams, I don't think very many historically significant photographers gave much thought to the details of exposure beyond an understanding of what their equipment was capable of reproducing.