i stared at this for the longest time, trying to figure out how many layers are reflected in this one. i could swear there's a second reflection within the first but you've set it up so well that i can't be sure. nice job!

did you tint this image or are these colors true?

Interesting & beautiful picture. To me it looks almost religious - I mistook the two seats for praying hands; there's a cross and Gothic shapes etc. Nice.

P: it's desaturated then toned with the Curves tool.

very very very nice shot. using the black background it's got a sort of eerie and sexy appeal to it.

I thought that had to be you, but the longer I look at it, the less it looks like like a person. It's too difficult to tell where the station begins and the inside of this train/bus ends. I just now made out the guy on the phone! OK, I think I need some rest now.

Interesting shot.

:-) :-) :-) !

cant figure it out atm, great reflection !!! I like the color tone as well.

I like this one. I thought it was some extremely avant-garde credit card at first... well, a business card perhaps.

Very cool image! I like how the black space seems to frame an image inside the photo. And the blue toning is just sexy. :)

great shot ther's alot to see

Incredible!

What a great photo!

I love how the reflection is a rounded rectangle.

The color also adds a very powerful "mood" to the photo.

Keep up the great work!

Well it's obvious that you like playing around with your photos a bit in PS (even if it is only marginally), have you ever thought about posting links to (smaller) original versions of the images so that we can see what you saw when you captured it. Might help some people (including me) to develop more of an eye for photogaphs. Just an idea...

Nice and sharp! marc, he does have a way with PS, but he doesnt overdo it, which is good. I like it!

I like this one the best of all your reflection shots. Glad you are
feeling better.

I love this.

Very nice shot. I still can't figure out whats going on. DId you take it inside the train or outside?

I like the still foreground in contrasted with a busy yet thoughtful center of focus. Great tone.

The horizon on the foreground is a little bit slanted - negligible for blogging puposes, but I wanted to point it out if you're planning on doing prints.

i love a good and complicated reflection shot. not all the time, but every now and then. If the composition works, when multi-layered and indecipherable, a sense of awe eventually sets in. That happened to me with this shot. All the black space, really helps. As does the monochromatic scale. This is the first of your shots in a long while which has really captured me. Be proud of this one.

This one is simply beautiful. I am still traying to define how is every thing set. Congrats. :) Nice to read you're not worse.

Very nice. Blue is good.

Quick comment, there were some ructions a few shots ago due to some Miklos comments.

Miklos is like the sober one at a party, everyone is delirious with alcohol and he is dryly observing. I personally do not feel this is bad, constructive critiscm helps us learn and although I know nothing of his skills I do feel that you need a certain balance. The flip side is of course that we all repeatedly return to this site so Dave, and I'm sure he'll agree, needs no further "positive reinforcement" from us.

As long as the comments are considered (which with Miklos they certainly seem to be) I see no harm in it.

"chromasia.com - the photolog of a trainspotter"; i never thought i'd stoop this low :(

P - as far as i can see, only one layer is reflected. you've got the immediate reflection on the outside of the window, followed by the people (is he on his phone? i hope that isn't the quiet coach)/seats inside, and then the far window on the other side of the train, which creates a 'frame in frame' feel, and further adds to the confusion.

dave - it's nice to know you're only stealing half of my titles now ;) oh, and can you enable the ..a href="" *title=""*.. bit? i like using titles and you don't let me :( {sniffle}

(start 3:52am)

tobias: It's kind of harsh to say everyone is delerious :) no?

Also, I really have no skills so who am I to judge anything? I just know what I like, what catches my eye... :)

Thirdly, I'm not out to be the "chemical imbalance" of chromasia, but I do think some people should consider for one second what they are typing.. I spend at _least_ a good 30 minutes with this comment window open almost every time I visit here.. Writing things, erasing things.. writing things, erasing more things... And mostly I just want to ask "why" .. for this one in particular; why is it incredible.. why is it one of the best reflection shots on chromasia.com ? I personally feel that it is unbalanced and the crop doesn't really work. And it is by far out of the reach of the 'best of your reflections' category.. Especially with that whole whatever it is going across the bottom 1/3rd of the image..

I think criticism is necessary, and this site proves that. What I mean is with me, I would much rather have 5 or 10 visitors that pick apart all of my images, giving reasons to why they like/dislike certain parts of it instead of coming and leaving a one-liner comment. Because if it gets criticized then I push myself to correct the mistakes, and gives me different standards to set for myself. If on the other hand people visited and at the end of the day I had 25 comments saying "nicely done" or "great job", I would probably get lazy. I'd start taking pictures of absolutely anything (and I have a few times), I'd even probably just throw a nice little note beside it, end it off with "yeah, I'm liking how this turned out" .. and then people would write the usual one-liners saying how great it is, and it would make me feel good..

I don't think I would ever want that to happen with me really :) .. Or maybe the problem is that it did start happening but I didn't like it as much as one would expect.. In either case, I think that is what's happening here. So instead of the some of the people that come here and don't really comment for the sake of helping out Dave but rather to get in touch with a 'mini celebrity', and for the fact that I wouldn't want Dave to get lazy and start posting just anything *ahem*, I will continue to come here and throw in my honest two cents once in a while...

(I realize that some people will laugh at all of the things I just said, for the reasons that I even bothered explaining all this crap, or because I made reference to myself so many times.. Whatever. Take it in as you please.)

(end: 4:49am .. time for some sleep, my 6am wakeup call is just around the corner)

Tobias: Excellent comment. I dont think we are doing Dave any favours by posting comments like "Brilliant", "Excellent shot!", "I love this!" etc etc. Sometimes I think Dave could put up the biggest load of old **** and some of us would go gaga over it.

Dave is an excellent photographer. We all know that (at least compared to most of us). What Dave needs is constructive praise and constructive criticism. We should look at each of his shots as though it was the first we had seen from him and critique it without the mental baggage which goes with having followed his earlier postings.

Dave: this is an interesting shot from a number of perspectives (groans all round!). I like it personally because I am interested in our railway heritage and I like the juxtapositions of old with new in the multi layer reflections. I am not sure about the layout of the image with the main reflection off centre in the frame and I think the composition would have been better with the main window reflection filling the frame more and the white strip (window frame?) being lower and smaller.

miklos - i think 'perceptions' (i think thats the word i'm looking for) are equally as important as criticisms and praise - or perhaps they're one in the same? *love's small energy* for example. having shuffled back, each photo receives around about 20 or so comments, unless - like this one - the title and the photo don't fall 'hand in hand' with one another, and dave asks for our opinion on how WE see it. and isn't that what's most important? it's one thing to be a photographer, but if you were a photojournalist situated in IRAQ right now, and you couldn't capture the emotion in a way that the viewers were able to see it, what good would you be? photographs are like poetry (from an analytical standpoint) in that, with any good one, there is an underlying meaning. sure, not everyone can 'read' photographs, nor do most appriciate them - but we, chromasia's dailies, are the next best thing. i know i completely screwed that last part up, but what i'm trying to say is - to dave, we are the next best thing. we're not the elite, nor do we take award winning photographs. we are NORMAL people, who lead normal lives, who see things the way normal people do. and if we can see underlying meanings in daves photographs, or captured emotion, or even if he takes something that allows our imagination to run wild - evidently, he's doing SOMETHING right. lets just be thankful that he takes the photographs that he does - god forbid he starts churning crap out like me :-/

dave - thankyou for chromasia.. and your train fettish. ever enlightening, as always.

(after a nice little nap...)

Alex:

1) I think Dave knows exactly how to get reactions out of people, and I believe that is the bigger reason why this site is popular, not particularly the greatness of the photographs.
2) I wonder if Dave ever intends to put such deep meaning behind his 'work' as people bring to the surface? (feel free to answer anytime Dave)
3) If (and I think the correct answer is) no to point #2, then why aren't many other photoblogs that are equally good (or even better than this) as popular? Perhaps they are trying to convey a message as well.. How come we don't notice?
4) I do think that with your attempt to contradict me, you're actually just making my points stronger. :D

I've said all I had to say in this thread.

(apologies for the length of what follows)

miklos:

"feel free to answer anytime Dave"

OK, thanks :-)

"I think Dave knows exactly how to get reactions out of people"

One thing I've always tried to do is to invite people to engage with what I do. A lot of the time that centres around the technical aspects of a shot, other times it's to do with what a shot evokes, but it's always an attempt to have some sort of dialogue. And I think this ties in with your point about other photoblogs (and their message) and Alex's point about the visitors to chromasia being normal people (i.e. not photo-critics): if you don't invite people to participate, more often than not they probably wont.

"I wonder if Dave ever intends to put such deep meaning behind his ‘work’ as people bring to the surface?"

Yes, and no. To be honest, I don't think this is a great question, because the meaning of any shot is as much to do with what you bring to it as I intend. For example love's small energy is a case in point. This was shot for a commission, and it meant something to the person it was produced for precisely because it existed in the context of her expectations and her reasons for commissioning it. And some people saw it in much the same way, and others didn't. My wife, for example, saw it in a completely different way to me. So who's right? Everybody, and nobody.

Another example, my favourite shot on chromasia at the moment, is don't look up. Does this shot have a deep meaning? I think it does, because it captures something of my daughter's unique spirit, but when I took it that wasn't my intention. We were sat round the dinner-table, where moments earlier she'd been pulling silly faces, and this shot was just one moment in a stream of events that I later extracted and put up here. So it's meaningful, but not because of anything particularly to do with my intentions when I took the shot (though my post-processing is clearly relevant).

By the same token, I guess, something that I don't consider particularly meaningful may be considerably more salient to someone else; not least because at least 3000 people look at each shot that I put up. By the law of averages there's bound to be something about any shot that somebody feels is worth commenting on.

"If on the other hand people visited and at the end of the day I had 25 comments saying “nicely done” or “great job”, I would probably get lazy"

I can see what you mean, but this isn't the case for me. The whole point of chromasia, or one of the major points, is that it's a vehicle that should enable me to improve. And the important thing is that I (mostly) know when I've put something crap up, and (mostly) know when I've posted something good. The "25 comments", for me at least, make me feel less bad about posting crap; i.e. it validates the process of posting an image a day rather than the shot itself. What they don't do, at least not to a significant extent, is make me think that a particular image is considerably better than I initially thought. That said, there have been shots that I've put up that I haven't been particularly keen on (this one, for example), that have got a great response, which I guess reinforces my point about how we all bring different things to bear on a particular shot.

"Because if it gets criticized then I push myself to correct the mistakes, and gives me different standards to set for myself"

There are probably only a handful of shots on chromasia that I'm genuinely happy with; i.e. ones that I don't think could be improved. In this sense, and this is often quite frustrating, my standards nearly always exceed my ability. Again, I can see your point, but I'm not worried about becoming complacent.

Adrian:

"What Dave needs is constructive praise and constructive criticism".

Yes please :-)

More generally: i) I don't think this is one of my best reflection shots, ii) I would have cropped it differently if I shot it again (but didn't crop it later as I try to post the shots that I took rather than cropping them half to death afterwards), iii) I should have processed the RAW file with DxO Optics Pro to correct the barrel distortion, but iv) I do quite like it nonetheless ;-)

And finally, returning to the nature of comments ...

One-liners – "great shot", "nice one", and so on – are fine: mostly because I don't need a critical commentary on good shots. But if somebody did want to add to that and say how a good shot could have been a great one, that's fine too.

One-lines – "this is crap", "I don't like this" – are much less useful. I do need a critical commentary on my shots that don't work, particularly if I'm not sure quite what's wrong with them, so negative comments, without any explanation, aren't much use.

Very nice, love the toning here and the central composition - works well for me.

Your Toned imagery and image composition continually inspire me to try and improve both with the camera and photoshop. I didn't bother to try and work out how many layers there were with this, I simply sat and stared and absorbed it all as a whole. Congrats.

Wow, I'm impressed that your wife let's you bring your camera to the dinner table. That's a good thing otherwise we wouldn't have "don't look up" for inspiration. My own camera is always handy as well.

I can't believe it, Miklos is critiquing my comments ;)

It was both a turn of phrase and also I do feel quite apt. I do tire of the "this shot is wonderful" comments, no matter how sincere. I do not know how to explain but I find them, selfish. Too personal and no one else can engage.

When I pass good or bad commentary I tend to try and explain, how I see it and what I feel. If an image doesn't appeal or move me enough to comment either way I tend not to pass comment. I feel not in an egotistical way that this will perhaps spur others on to say what they feel, which I think is far more rewarding for Dave.

I am glad that this has generated some input and that I am not alone in my opinion.

I LOVE the blue tone on this one. Truly one of your best. Sorry about the past comments...no hard feelings. :-) Hurry up and get well mate.

One final thought. I wasn't around when photoblogs started and so I am not really aware of how the 'post an image a day' thing started.

I actually find it hard to believe that anyone can reasonably expect to produce a gem of a shot day in day out and I think we could all do with remembering that (Yes me as well)

I had a discussion the other day with a very successful designer and he says that the issue of subjectivity has haunted him virtually every day of his career. He has however come to terms that people will not always like what he does.

Criticism:
I feel that criticising work is somewhat impossible at times. Mainly because of the fact that most people either like something or not. Even when they don't like a piece of work the changes suggested would probably make the work look horrible to someone who liked what was presented in the first place. (hope that makes some sense)

I was in New York last year and we went to the guggenheim museum. Amongst the many pieces of 'art' was a security guard who was watching over a hard boiled egg still in itsshell. The egg was sitting on top of a box about 4ft high.

My wife just laughed in disbelief and even the security guard was smirking. However along came a couple who obviously saw something in this piece of 'art' and were discussing its finer points.

I think this just proves that we really can only judge something based simply on whether we like it or not. When we like something we can often justify why but when we don't we find it much harder to explain. The semitotics involved in this are obviously complex but I believe it can be explained. I remember my first design teacher telling me that 'anything is art' if the person says it is.

But is photography supposed to be art? The swiss graphic designers were perhaps the first to embrace photography in their commercial designs, mainly because it depicted reality as opposed to illustration which was deemed too open to misinterpretation. However that theory didn't last long with the Swiss movement and at one stage they ditched all pictures in favour of type only solutions.

So I feel that photography is now considered as art. People like Man Ray have always been producing art photography and it goes on and on.

Anyway thats my take on it.

Great shot, love the blueish tone and the reflections... It's a very interesting point of view...

just a note, that i completely agree with milkos's comment. i believe photography as an internet medium has raised this issue to sky high levels, where getting decent critique is difficult and rare.

internet creates "celebrities" (as milkos eloquently put it) everywhere. in photography, music, writing, blogs, news, gadgets. its primarily a social network.

however imho, if one tries to create art, the ability to distance yourself from whatever feedback, positive or negative, is paramount. positive will bias and relax you, and negative will stress you out. for me, i have to be a bit on the edge (stressful) side to do well. but its different for different people, and they key (imho) is to find the balance yourself.

on that note, i don't think this photograph is up to par with what work i've seen. not balanced enough... too messy inside, too empty outside, its just not catching my eye.

Thanks everyone.

And there are a couple of points above that I've not addressed. I'll try and find enough time to answer them over the next couple of days.