Well, of course you don't know that...

Which reminds me, what do you do to get the people in your series of event shots to interact with you the way they do?

Fair comment

But isn't that a case of exercising some Quality Control before posting?[/quote]You know that, and I know that...

(why do you think I so rarely post pictures )

Yes, that's why in your case I'm confident that when you post a picture, you've already put some thought into what you think of it

I'm not always so confident, which is why I tend to agree with Doug, that a bit of self-analysis would be helpful.

Each to his own, I guess.

I can't help feeling that a more natural treatment would have been just as good. Mostly nothing wrong with the compositions (sky is a bit too thin in the first of the thrombolite shots), but there's bags of detail and interest to keep the attention.

I do like 1 and 3; 1 looks almost natural, and 3 is just so bold and the colours are fantastic.

The horizon in the last one has a troubling curve to it, otherwise I like that too.

Kudos to Trouty for spotting the yawn, which I also like, again mostly because it's reasonably natural looking.

Not really criticising the effects, HDR just isn't my thing. Slightly oversharpened, though, perhaps.

I tried a couple of local club meetings some years ago - one was a basic Photoshop tutorial which was no more useful than any one of a thousand YouTube videos. The other was a studio session with a rather unattractive model and about three two minute sessions taking pictures.

When I discovered that the lighting kit could only be used by club members on studio nights (I was hoping to be able to use the studio other times as well), I decided I wouldn't bother again.

There was no anti-Pentax bias - to their credit, no one seemed to care what kit anyone was using - but it was really rather dull.

I agree with Smeg and Judder.

The distressing doesn't even look particularly realistic. Dust on negs comes out as white spots, not black, on prints, so I'm not sure what the black specks are supposed to be.

I do like the original though.

Just out of curiosity, while we're on the subject, are there any roadies around here?

Yes, certainly looks a lot sharper.
It's quite a stretch to imagine that green would be so different from yellow (both being in the middle of the visible spectrum) that it would make enough of a difference to the AF to make such a difference.

Also, the DoF in both the one with the green (f'8') and the one with the yellow (f11) should be huge at that distance. The AF would have to be very confused.

The subject distance range is "distant view" in the EXIF of both shots - how far away does the subject have to be to get that categorisation?
Bit of a straw-clutch, but it couldn't have focused on the window could it?

I'm not convinced.

There's more contrast on the right - buildings and dark greens against light greens.

Are you absolutely sure it's sharper and not contrastier on the right.

Also, it's a very tiny crop. You'd never notice in the complete image, surely?

I've struggled to comment on these pictures, since when I first looked through them, I didn't like them much and I've been trying to figure out why.

'Flightpath' troubles me because it's a dominant abstract, juxtaposed with the aeroplane. Neither one thing nor the other, and it strikes me that the plane is just there so that that corner isn't empty. The absence of a reflection even made me wonder if the plane was cloned in just for that purpose, but I can't see DrO making that kind of schoolboy error.

The cranes have promise, but the truncation by the very dominant wall or fence or whatever it is in the foreground spoils it for me. Also the vignette seems a contrivance to keep the eye from noticing that the top corners are empty.

I quite like the plastic sheeting-covered building. I don't mind the dark sky above, but it would seem somehow more satisfying if the 'lighting' also illuminated the top front corner of the building, since there's a lot of detail there that would make the overall effect more interesting.

'Gotham' I don't like at all, and I can't figure out why, which annoys me no end

I don't usually like pictures of sculptures, since they very rarely do them justice, and the baby is no exception. I'd like to see the lights on the left manipulated a bit so that they look more like the missing eye and eyebrow - that would be the sort of freaky that appeals to me.

'Tower of power' I do like. There's no contrived vignette, and the light looks more convincing. The still-visible detail in the foreground building gives more depth to the tower, and adds to the moody, gloomy overall feel to it. It's much better than Tower of Power 2, which isn't lit as interestingly, doesn't have the contrast of the foreground and background elements, and also has the rather clumsy haloing up the left edge.

Quite like 'Willis', but not enough contrast or detail.

Quite like 'Lloyds' too, but shouldn't it be rotated CW by 90?

KBN1 - Very promising, but spoiled for me by the statue, and the absence of detail.

KBN2 - the leaning feels contrived to me, and I'm left wanting more of the contrast between the old and the new. The lack of detail as the eye moves upwards I find quite frustrating.

The Gherkin is another matter altogether - I think it's really good. The shine gives it more intensity than the others, and the angry clouds complement that well. The darkness of the clouds isn't so total that there's no detail to be seen, and the bright diamond at the bottom is a detail that makes the image sparkle. Dark, but still light, if you know what I mean - it's the contradiction that makes the image.


Overall, I think that the darkness makes for a very effective mood, but sometimes at the expense of the detail and hence the level of interest in the picture.

That's why the Tower of Power and the Gherkin stand out for me as the best by a substantial margin.