Harworth colliery pit tower

Some background would be in order I suppose, this is Europe's deepest coal shaft tower at Harworth South Yorkshire UK, on a now disused mine, and they've decided to take down the tower. This has provoked uproar from the locals who are very proud of their coal mining heritage, and especially by the grandchildren as it was their 'landmark' for where their gran lived when paying her a visit "I can see the pit tower!!" etc. Anyway, the girl in the photo really wanted a photo of her and the pit tower before it came down, so we swooped by, took about 70 quick pics in bitter conditions and I couldn't justify hanging around any longer as the kids were freezing, but I took 70 as the little sod on the right refused to look at the camera ( all been there! ) so only about 3 were useable. Framing was awkward due to lamp posts and keeping the kids out of the road, but I suppose what I'm really after is a critique of the overall picture, a memorial to an industrial past, with the new generation that follows, lighthearted yet sombre, hopeful yet bleak, it took a fair bit of RAW processing, does it work??

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/q9z7​jN

Great photo.

So many ways to do b&w. I would like to see it with the blacks brought up a bit slightly and either: more whites, more exposure, more 'something' to give it a slight pop.

I like the texture on the kid's jeans on camera right - maybe some vibrance or similar applied to the tower?


nicely done

A few random thoughts...

Tower is not vertical - actually bigger at the top - I assume this isn't the case in reality. Is this from LR's auto or vertical adjust?

Sky seems slightly haloed on the left where it meets the fence and tower.

Compositionally the tower and children don't seem connected - perhaps if you had tried a much lower viewpoint so the children stood out against the plain sky and the tower was to their left or right.

Quite a few distracting objects e.g. the thing over the foot.

To me nothing about the tower suggests mining - I'm not sure how you can get that point across, but it does seem fundamental to the "storey" - perhaps you need a set of different images.

If you just showed the image to someone, I think they would see a nice a picture of 3 kids with too much irrelevant background.

Appreciate you probably had few options available at the time.

wallstreetoneil wrote in post #17335978
Great photo.

So many ways to do b&w. I would like to see it with the blacks brought up a bit slightly and either: more whites, more exposure, more 'something' to give it a slight pop.

I like the texture on the kid's jeans on camera right - maybe some vibrance or similar applied to the tower?


nicely done

Yorkshires version of the CN tower

Martin Dixon wrote in post #17336002
A few random thoughts...

Tower is not vertical - actually bigger at the top - I assume this isn't the case in reality. Is this from LR's auto or vertical adjust?

Sky seems slightly haloed on the left where it meets the fence and tower.

Compositionally the tower and children don't seem connected - perhaps if you had tried a much lower viewpoint so the children stood out against the plain sky and the tower was to their left or right.

Quite a few distracting objects e.g. the thing over the foot.

To me nothing about the tower suggests mining - I'm not sure how you can get that point across, but it does seem fundamental to the "storey" - perhaps you need a set of different images.

If you just showed the image to someone, I think they would see a nice a picture of 3 kids with too much irrelevant background.

Appreciate you probably had few options available at the time.

You're right, the tower does look bigger at the top, but weirdly it's the same in the original, and when corrected in photoshop RAW for that lens, interesting, optical illusion from the panels??....

I can see the haloing, but, I didn't do any local adjustments that would cause that, and it's not in the original that I can see, so not sure on that one....

Composition wise, distracting objects wise, totally agree, it was a swine to get right, so restricted on where I could take the photo, and the time that I had, and that was the best I could get, I'll try and photoshop out that kerb over his foot later...

Well I'm not a photoshop expert, only the second time I've had a go, but I've removed 4 things to tidy up the pic, two lamp posts, the bright white bollard, and the kerb stone, lets just pretend amongst ourselves the kids toes are buried in the bark mulch............

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qb3q​ix

Awesome photo! only thing i would suggest is more exposure to the background, just like the previous poster mentioned.