Cycling - artistic expression

Forgive me if this is the wrong place to post these. I've been playing with this for shots that are out of focus, or blurry, but still have decent composition. I'll have to try to clean up the noise some more in the final product.

Thoughts?

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kinda like first one.
first thing that comes to mind is a little Neiman-ish

I enjoy playing around with the glowing edges filter as much as anyone, but I like #1 and #3 better.

I have played around trying to get similar results, but yours seem to have a little something extra and I like the look of these.

Biffbradford wrote in post #10649233
I've been playing with this for shots that are out of focus, or blurry . . .

Thoughts?

I think they look amateurish and as though someone is trying to save bad shots.

But those are just "my" thoughts. I don't think the compositions are all that good to begin with.

Learn from your mistakes and move on, try not to make the same mistakes the next time and try in increase your creativity.

AZAlphaDog wrote in post #10649994
I think they look amateurish and as though someone is trying to save bad shots.

But those are just "my" thoughts. I don't think the compositions are all that good to begin with.

Learn from your mistakes and move on, try not to make the same mistakes the next time and try in increase your creativity.

Is this what they call "constructive criticism?"

Hey, everybody has their opinion. Yes, I am trying to save some bad shots! I said that I was! Personally, I think the composition is good. Whats bad about it - if I'm allowed to ask?

MOkoFOko wrote in post #10650141
Is this what they call "constructive criticism?"

I think it's fair, wouldn't take it as a cheap shot and would thank him for taking the time to appraise the work. When you ask for critique, I would think you want honesty above all. It's great to get lots of kind words, but only if they are being honest. Otherwise it just becomes a big circle-jerk.

JMHO.

Regards,
Jeff

Biffbradford wrote in post #10650175
Hey, everybody has their opinion. Yes, I am trying to save some bad shots! I said that I was! Personally, I think the composition is good. Whats bad about it - if I'm allowed to ask?

That's what I'm wondering. Rather seems like he was dogging you without justification. The whole point is to provide helpful critiques--just saying "it's bad, try harder" seems rather pointless.

As Alpha Dog says: "Help me learn"!

(I thought that's what he said, oh well - help me anyway!)

Firstly, I would say that sometimes no matter how tough it seems you need to learn to objectively self-edit your work i.e., being able to say to yourself, yea this shot would have been a winner if I would have timed it just a half second later, or exposed it better or composed it this way, but I didn't and no amount of photoshop is going to save it, so I won't show it to anyone.

We all have shots like that, this one would have been a real winner, but the harsh reality is that, for some reason, it is not, there it is . . .

I might as well learn from my mistakes and move on to the next image.

To some degree the amount of "suckage" you see in your pictures is subjective, you can post the most "craptastic" images on the internet and there is no doubt that someone will respond and say it is the best picture that they have ever seen, that is just the nature of artistic expression. It's all very subjective.

Now if you go by the rule of thirds you will notice that if you look at your images with a critical eye that all but the last one is centered, flat out perfectly centered in the frame, just like you would expect with a nice shot my grandmother could take with her little point n' shoot camera.

The thing with the rule of thirds is that rules are made to be broken, and again it's all very subjective, but most times you need tons of experience and skill to break the rules and get away with it.

Want to see some examples of how (in my opinion) to shoot cycling, look at these images of the Tour de France from the boston globe: Tour images part I

Now you are going to look at some of those images and say "hey they look centered to me" and yes they are, like I said sometimes you can break the rules, but there is an equal number of image that follow the rule of thirds in there as well.

Still not convinced, check out the Tour images part II

So the key things you need to look at, backgrounds, story-telling images, and rule of thirds, now this is not the end-all-be-all information about either photography and or cycling photography, I am, just like everyone else, still learning myself, learning to see light, learning to see composition, learning to take compelling images.

I am not perfect, or better than anyone else, not in any way, shape or form, but you asked for my "thoughts" so I offered up some input.

There aren't many times when you can "save" a bad photo with photoshop (but that is just my opinion).

First of all, there is NO WAY that my best shot from Richton, IL , basically a lower class south side suburb of Chicago, is going to match up with the worst shot from the Tour going through the Alps no matter how hard I try. Not a fair comparison.

Secondly, to tell you the truth, I never think about the 'rule of thirds' when I'm shooting, nor do I center every shot I make. Does that make me a lousy photographer? Could be! However, I don't think that just because an image is centered, it's doomed to have poor composition. You have photos on your site as well that are dead centered, but I guess those are okay.

Thanks for your input though. Everyone has a right to their opinion!

Just keep fighting it.

You can't say that I didn't have any reasons for my comments, I backed them up with the "how's and why's" with excellent examples of what to do.

What you chose to do with the excellent examples I provided is up to you.

It's all on you now bro.

Will you learn something or will you make excuses?

(who cares which cyclists and where you shoot, it's all about the images).

Hey Biff, I don't agree with you often, but I'll have to agree with you on this one. I think it is a rather good idea to try to salvage some poor images. That in itself is creative.

Yes, those Tour images from the above links are spectacular. However, those few images were probably the best ones from a pool of over 10,000 plus images. Not every shot we take is good enough to be on the cover of a magazine, hell- not even a small percentage. I, personally, am in the business to sell photos and if that means not following every photography guideline or rule to do it, so be it. With that being said, I wouldn't waste my time on Photoshop filters like that. Yes, I've done it in the past and it's fun to fool around with, but the bottom line is no one's going to buy them. Maybe I'll work up a few like that to put on FaceBook, but that's about it.

Biffbradford wrote in post #10651250
First of all, there is NO WAY that my best shot from Richton, IL , basically a lower class south side suburb of Chicago, is going to match up with the worst shot from the Tour going through the Alps no matter how hard I try. Not a fair comparison.

Secondly, to tell you the truth, I never think about the 'rule of thirds' when I'm shooting, nor do I center every shot I make. Does that make me a lousy photographer? Could be! However, I don't think that just because an image is centered, it's doomed to have poor composition. You have photos on your site as well that are dead centered, but I guess those are okay.

Thanks for your input though. Everyone has a right to their opinion!

I don't think about the Rule of Thirds while shooting either (unless I'm shooting landscapes or something like that) but it is a big factor for me when post-processing. I will use the Rule of Thirds in most of my cropping. It does make a big difference.

Biffbradford wrote in post #10651250
First of all, there is NO WAY that my best shot from Richton, IL , basically a lower class south side suburb of Chicago, is going to match up with the worst shot from the Tour going through the Alps no matter how hard I try. Not a fair comparison.

Secondly, to tell you the truth, I never think about the 'rule of thirds' when I'm shooting, nor do I center every shot I make. Does that make me a lousy photographer? Could be! However, I don't think that just because an image is centered, it's doomed to have poor composition. You have photos on your site as well that are dead centered, but I guess those are okay.

Thanks for your input though. Everyone has a right to their opinion!

Okay, well I'm going to keep working it. I think that with the right images it will work. The more you practice something, the better you get at it.

Thanks for the input everyone.