I don't know about anyone else, but when I come across some small item that I think is worth photographing I'm always loathe to move it – as though somehow it would devalue the shot if I picked it up and put it somewhere else. Which, I suppose, is the justification for this shot – the blue, grey, white and red stones competed for attention – in a shot that I envisioned as detail, age, and rust.
Oh, and I've set up a new 'beachcombing' category (that I need to populate at some point) for shots such as this.
captured camera lens focal length aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO flash image quality RAW converter cropped?
And yes I really never move things. I just take pics of things where they are. If they are not in a good place, too bad, no shot.
comment byJonathan at 08:45 PM (GMT) on 24 May, 2005
David, I love the contrast of the rusty element or fence (whichever it may be) against the rocks. I also agree sometimes it's better to leave well enough alone. In the end it's more fun to say this is how you found it than to say, "I know it's a great shot, I moved it so it would be!"
I would not move it when I take the shot either. However, after I'm done with the shot, if the item is on the beach where people could step on and injure themselves, I would defenitely remove it. :)
comment bydoffer at 09:18 PM (GMT) on 24 May, 2005
Jarod: Yes, the rocks were desaturated. I also duplicated the image in a new layer, Gaussian blurred it, and set the blend mode to overlay - hence the slightly diffuse lighting.
comment by Mikey at 09:42 PM (GMT) on 24 May, 2005
Great shot, David.
I know you don't normally do this but I wanted to double-check: Did you greyscale the shot and put the color back in for the spring?
I really love the colours, curves and contrast in this image. The 3 C's I guess you could call them, hehe. Nice shot David - not your average beachcombing material :)
comment byaashish at 02:02 AM (GMT) on 25 May, 2005
can't agree with u any less. this is an awesome background for the wire.
comment by Julie at 02:40 AM (GMT) on 25 May, 2005
Do you sell prints?
comment by Julie at 02:44 AM (GMT) on 25 May, 2005
Oops, sorry, after I posted that question I looked around and found my own answer printed out nicely in the section called "purchase!" Sorry I didn't look before I asked, I guess I got carried away.
This pic really reminds me of something NIN did with their "Downward Spiral" album. I love the contrast and the simplicity of the pic. It just shouts for attentian. Awsome job as usual.
here is the link to the picture im talking about. http://www.nin.com/halo/10/index.html
click on the small black and white picture.
comment by jcyrhs at 04:00 AM (GMT) on 25 May, 2005
I love the shape of this rusty subject. it's just so fitting in the picture.
and great tones with the desaturated background. it brings out the subject so much more! looking forward to many other of your beachcombing shots.
The edges and the ground are out of focus - a little distracting. You have already put the spotlight on the spiral thing with the selective colourisation, so why blur the background as well? Notice you shot at 100 ISO - some scope for shutting down apeture if you raised ISO setting.
comment by Adam at 12:24 PM (GMT) on 25 May, 2005
Wow, that's really nice. Reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy and his found art stuff. With the background just out of focus, it's almost hypnotic...
comment by tobias at 12:32 PM (GMT) on 25 May, 2005
Your work continues to frustrate me because it is so reliable and when describing what you have done to it in an off-hand way you lose me. I love the image, the colours are great. It looks like rusted through barbed wire. The crispness is miraculous. I have a question though:
"Jarod: Yes, the rocks were desaturated. I also duplicated the image in a new layer, Gaussian blurred it, and set the blend mode to overlay - hence the slightly diffuse lighting."
How do you go about isoloating the pebbles in photoshop to desaturate them rather than the main subject? Please be patronising in explaining to the extent of say, that of a 5 year old child, I'd appreciate that as I cannot persuade photoshop CS to highlight certain objects and not others.
Cheers
tobias
p.s. bought photoshop cs and now I think its' CS2, how do you keep up? Does anyone bother?
Nick: other than the bottom right-hand corner, which I did add a fraction of blur to, the background was blurred as a consequence of shooting at f/5.6.
tobias: ok, here's what you do. First, the desaturation was done via an adjustment layer rather than directly. Second, I manually created a mask to allow the spring itself to be unnaffected by the desaturation layer. This is time consuming, but with irregular items such as this it's the only reliable way to construct an accurate mask.
And no, I don't have CS2. I think the main benefit of upgrading is in terms of the way it will process RAW files. As I rarely use it for this I don't think I'll bother upgrading.
Just to swim agains the tide a little, for me shots like this scream 'photoshop' to such an extent that I find I can't appreciate the subject matter.
The rust is interesting and colourful, and it does contrast nicely with the texture of the stones- but my mind just can't get past the whole colour on b&w thing. When I see this done its almost as I've come across a particularly telling line in a book, only to find that the author has put it in bold, italics, underlined it, and then gone over it with a highlighter pen just in case I didn't notice. Perhaps its just a pet peeve of mine, as there are clearly a lot of people who love using this effect in their shots :-)
Quality Dave. That rusty metal is hot, it must be.
comment by VPra at 04:44 PM (GMT) on 25 May, 2005
That picture looks like the exact album cover of "Nine Inch Nails"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000001Y89/qid=1117035831/sr=1-18/ref=sr_1_18/102-6536966-8124919?v=glance&s=music
I agree with Nick and mattp - I find the overlaid blur distracting - I try and look at it but the detail is obscured so there's nothing to look *at*. I'd love to see it without the blur... though that's your choice!
Thanks everyone, and I know that selective black and whites aren't to everyone's taste.
comment byCameron at 01:38 AM (GMT) on 3 June, 2005
I like this shot David. I would like to see the original without the "selective desaturating" but this style works for me too. I am interested in the whole moving objects discussion as if in some way it devalues the integrity of a shot. I don't know why, but I used to think this way too, until last year, when I took this shot at the beach. I and my daughter had arranged these rocks on the beach, it was too interesting to me not to photograph! It wasn't until I got home and showed this image to some friends online that Andy Goldsworthy's name came up. I see he has already been referred to in these responses. In my ignorance I had never heard of him before (coincedently a TV special on his work showed soon after that, strange these synchronicities!) We often frame our subjects in certain ways and also ask people to move (or we move) so poles etc don't appear to be sticking out of there heads. Isn't this similar to moving "found objects" to enhance a composition? Also what is the difference between changing positions of things in your compositions to changing saturation and so on in photoshop? These are all conscious manipulations on the photographers part to enhance a composition according to the photographers taste.
Just thought for food...uh, hang on...
Cheers!
Cameron
I don't know about anyone else, but when I come across some small item that I think is worth photographing I'm always loathe to move it – as though somehow it would devalue the shot if I picked it up and put it somewhere else. Which, I suppose, is the justification for this shot – the blue, grey, white and red stones competed for attention – in a shot that I envisioned as detail, age, and rust.
Oh, and I've set up a new 'beachcombing' category (that I need to populate at some point) for shots such as this.
camera
lens
focal length
aperture
shutter speed
shooting mode
exposure bias
metering mode
ISO
flash
image quality
RAW converter
cropped?
4.17pm on 22/5/05
Canon 20D
EF 17-40 f/4L USM
37mm (59mm equiv.)
f/5.6
1/125
aperture priority
+0.0
evaluative
100
no
RAW
C1 Pro
minor
This shot reminds me of this one:
http://shatteredabstracts.com.ru/archives/laptop_kids.html
And yes I really never move things. I just take pics of things where they are. If they are not in a good place, too bad, no shot.
David, I love the contrast of the rusty element or fence (whichever it may be) against the rocks. I also agree sometimes it's better to leave well enough alone. In the end it's more fun to say this is how you found it than to say, "I know it's a great shot, I moved it so it would be!"
Raffi: yes, I see what you mean.
Raffi/Jonathan: yes, I think that's the thinking behind the 'beachcombing' category – that these are things I've come across and photographed in situ.
I would not move it when I take the shot either. However, after I'm done with the shot, if the item is on the beach where people could step on and injure themselves, I would defenitely remove it. :)
Wow! Thats really cool man! Really crisp image!
This looks like the kind of stuff you see on a calender NOT.
Yeah I like this - is it a spring or old element ?
John: I'm not sure what it is. It was about four inches in diameter so I guess it could be any number of things.
What kind of photoprocessing was done? Did you desaturate the rocks? Love the colors!
Jarod: Yes, the rocks were desaturated. I also duplicated the image in a new layer, Gaussian blurred it, and set the blend mode to overlay - hence the slightly diffuse lighting.
Great shot, David.
I know you don't normally do this but I wanted to double-check: Did you greyscale the shot and put the color back in for the spring?
Mikey: the background is colourised, though only faintly, and the effect is masked for the spring.
Intresting! Nice details, and the colour makes it stand out alot!
excellent color saturation.
I really love the colours, curves and contrast in this image. The 3 C's I guess you could call them, hehe. Nice shot David - not your average beachcombing material :)
Looks like a burner from an electric range to me. Something washed up on shore?
Good colors
can't agree with u any less. this is an awesome background for the wire.
Do you sell prints?
Oops, sorry, after I posted that question I looked around and found my own answer printed out nicely in the section called "purchase!" Sorry I didn't look before I asked, I guess I got carried away.
This pic really reminds me of something NIN did with their "Downward Spiral" album. I love the contrast and the simplicity of the pic. It just shouts for attentian. Awsome job as usual.
here is the link to the picture im talking about. http://www.nin.com/halo/10/index.html
click on the small black and white picture.
I love the shape of this rusty subject. it's just so fitting in the picture.
and great tones with the desaturated background. it brings out the subject so much more! looking forward to many other of your beachcombing shots.
I love the contrast in color, Great shot!
Oh my... too good photo to be true. Absolutely love it.
Best...
Looks like a mattress spring to me that has collapsed because of corrosion.
Who woulda thought you could spot such beauty in such an object and then to be able to accent it so interestingly.
I'm amazed most every day.
Sharla: I think you may well be right about it being a bed spring, I hadn't thought of that.
snake! in sea world :-)
Very nice, i like the selective colouring. Was the spring flattened or not? It looks like it is standing proud of the background, almost 3D.
The edges and the ground are out of focus - a little distracting. You have already put the spotlight on the spiral thing with the selective colourisation, so why blur the background as well? Notice you shot at 100 ISO - some scope for shutting down apeture if you raised ISO setting.
Wow, that's really nice. Reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy and his found art stuff. With the background just out of focus, it's almost hypnotic...
Your work continues to frustrate me because it is so reliable and when describing what you have done to it in an off-hand way you lose me. I love the image, the colours are great. It looks like rusted through barbed wire. The crispness is miraculous. I have a question though:
"Jarod: Yes, the rocks were desaturated. I also duplicated the image in a new layer, Gaussian blurred it, and set the blend mode to overlay - hence the slightly diffuse lighting."
How do you go about isoloating the pebbles in photoshop to desaturate them rather than the main subject? Please be patronising in explaining to the extent of say, that of a 5 year old child, I'd appreciate that as I cannot persuade photoshop CS to highlight certain objects and not others.
Cheers
tobias
p.s. bought photoshop cs and now I think its' CS2, how do you keep up? Does anyone bother?
SteveO: yes, it was flattened.
Nick: other than the bottom right-hand corner, which I did add a fraction of blur to, the background was blurred as a consequence of shooting at f/5.6.
tobias: ok, here's what you do. First, the desaturation was done via an adjustment layer rather than directly. Second, I manually created a mask to allow the spring itself to be unnaffected by the desaturation layer. This is time consuming, but with irregular items such as this it's the only reliable way to construct an accurate mask.
And no, I don't have CS2. I think the main benefit of upgrading is in terms of the way it will process RAW files. As I rarely use it for this I don't think I'll bother upgrading.
Just to swim agains the tide a little, for me shots like this scream 'photoshop' to such an extent that I find I can't appreciate the subject matter.
The rust is interesting and colourful, and it does contrast nicely with the texture of the stones- but my mind just can't get past the whole colour on b&w thing. When I see this done its almost as I've come across a particularly telling line in a book, only to find that the author has put it in bold, italics, underlined it, and then gone over it with a highlighter pen just in case I didn't notice. Perhaps its just a pet peeve of mine, as there are clearly a lot of people who love using this effect in their shots :-)
Best wishes
mattp
I love the texture of the rust.
this is so pretty. it looked like a loooong arm of a lobstar to me first :).
i kinda always see other things in your images. but i like that.
Quality Dave. That rusty metal is hot, it must be.
That picture looks like the exact album cover of "Nine Inch Nails"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000001Y89/qid=1117035831/sr=1-18/ref=sr_1_18/102-6536966-8124919?v=glance&s=music
I agree with Nick and mattp - I find the overlaid blur distracting - I try and look at it but the detail is obscured so there's nothing to look *at*. I'd love to see it without the blur... though that's your choice!
Thanks everyone, and I know that selective black and whites aren't to everyone's taste.
I like this shot David. I would like to see the original without the "selective desaturating" but this style works for me too. I am interested in the whole moving objects discussion as if in some way it devalues the integrity of a shot. I don't know why, but I used to think this way too, until last year, when I took this shot at the beach. I and my daughter had arranged these rocks on the beach, it was too interesting to me not to photograph! It wasn't until I got home and showed this image to some friends online that Andy Goldsworthy's name came up. I see he has already been referred to in these responses. In my ignorance I had never heard of him before (coincedently a TV special on his work showed soon after that, strange these synchronicities!) We often frame our subjects in certain ways and also ask people to move (or we move) so poles etc don't appear to be sticking out of there heads. Isn't this similar to moving "found objects" to enhance a composition? Also what is the difference between changing positions of things in your compositions to changing saturation and so on in photoshop? These are all conscious manipulations on the photographers part to enhance a composition according to the photographers taste.
Just thought for food...uh, hang on...
Cheers!
Cameron