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DPChallenge Forums >> Rant >> Lousy Timing: 83rd vs 12th place
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11/16/2005 12:32:27 AM · #1
Well, I can't win for tryin!
In the landscape challenge i entered this:

and got 83rd.
Alansfreed entered this:

and got 12th.
The only real difference is the time of the friggin' day!
Yes, i feel the need to rant dammit!

LATER that same day I got this shot:


And from now on, ALL my entried will be shot at night!

BTW, congrats Alan, sorry you missed the top 10.

Message edited by author 2005-11-16 00:33:17.
11/16/2005 12:44:03 AM · #2
Prof,

The entered shot arguably would have fared better had you eliminated a third of the rather blah foreground and added nice, dramatic sky above. The composition as entered is very static, kind of flat feeling, ya know.

It's VERY interesting to compare the two night shots; They are virtually identical in framing/POV, yet Alan's is significantly stronger IMO. I'll hold off saying why I think so in case others want to weigh in. Thanks for posting this so we can compare them; it's a fascinating little confluence to probe...

Robt.
11/16/2005 12:47:10 AM · #3
Taken through a tinted window?
11/16/2005 12:52:23 AM · #4
His is sharper cause i forgot one rather important thing - the QR plate that attached the camera to the tripod! Doh! I had to hand hold/brace it against the tripod.

Minor notes: My shot was 9 or so at night. I suspect Alan's was closer to 6 - the USX tower is all dark in mine, but well lit in his. Also, Alan noticed in mine before i did, that on the left of the images, the bridge is yellow in Alan's and kind of lit in mine - Heinz field is just out of view on the left and was lit up like all git out when i was taking my shot.

As for my cropping...i like the sky so i left it, but many commenters thought it should be cropped tighter i guess, or something - lots of comments on composition. I did it very classic.. 1/3 to fore, main and sky, right? I know the horizon is to middle-ish..no easy fix. Also, the lower right is dark because it is in shadew from Mt Washington which is just out of view on the right. This was taken at 3:30 in the afternnon and the sun was already ducking out of view. I was hoping for tug boat of cruise ship (we have sternwheelers here) to be in the river, but alas, no such luck. THe fountain was even off due to high winds. Oh well, this will all be there tomorrow so i can try again.

It did make my own personal Top 4, so that makes me happy!
11/16/2005 12:55:25 AM · #5
Originally posted by bear_music:

it's a fascinating little confluence to probe...

Robt.


The [b]TITLE[/b}! Of course, I lost on account my title is not as goods as Alans!

Hey, I stole mine from this book's subtitle with November added.

BTW, the cover shot on the book might have taken 1st!
11/16/2005 01:04:18 AM · #6
Originally posted by Prof_Fate:

Well, I can't win for tryin!
In the landscape challenge i entered this:

and got 83rd.
Alansfreed entered this:

and got 12th.
The only real difference is the time of the friggin' day!
Yes, i feel the need to rant dammit!

LATER that same day I got this shot:


And from now on, ALL my entried will be shot at night!

BTW, congrats Alan, sorry you missed the top 10.


I follow right at back! ^.^
11/16/2005 01:21:28 AM · #7
Originally posted by Prof_Fate:

His is sharper cause i forgot one rather important thing - the QR plate that attached the camera to the tripod! Doh! I had to hand hold/brace it against the tripod.

Minor notes: My shot was 9 or so at night. I suspect Alan's was closer to 6 - the USX tower is all dark in mine, but well lit in his. Also, Alan noticed in mine before i did, that on the left of the images, the bridge is yellow in Alan's and kind of lit in mine - Heinz field is just out of view on the left and was lit up like all git out when i was taking my shot.

As for my cropping...i like the sky so i left it, but many commenters thought it should be cropped tighter i guess, or something - lots of comments on composition. I did it very classic.. 1/3 to fore, main and sky, right? I know the horizon is to middle-ish..no easy fix. Also, the lower right is dark because it is in shadew from Mt Washington which is just out of view on the right. This was taken at 3:30 in the afternnon and the sun was already ducking out of view. I was hoping for tug boat of cruise ship (we have sternwheelers here) to be in the river, but alas, no such luck. THe fountain was even off due to high winds. Oh well, this will all be there tomorrow so i can try again.

It did make my own personal Top 4, so that makes me happy!


Yah, 3 big differences. You've identified two; sharpness and his has more lights on in the buildings that are dark in yours. The third big difference is the patterns on the water; his is a 15-second exposure, yours a half-second exposure. So he has gauzy, epehemeral water where you have sharply-delineated water, wavelets and reflections both. Also his sky is a little more pelasing, probably due solely to the longer exposure.

It's very interesting; leave out the sharpness issue, which you've explained, and the other differences are subtle but important.

Referring to your comments re: the cropping of the day shot, my problem is that the image is divided very nearly into two zones, water and the rest, and nearly half the image is given over to an area that really isn't contributing anything detail-wise to the image. So overall it feels a little cramped on top to me. Of course that's just my take.

They both are very nice shots.

Robt.

Message edited by author 2005-11-16 01:22:27.
11/16/2005 05:14:32 AM · #8
I think that it is amusing that Alansfreed states in his description that:

"Shot from the West End Overlook in Pittsburgh, while some seedy characters lurked in the bushes... "

Prof_Fate, what exactly were you doing in the bushes??
11/16/2005 07:35:26 AM · #9
bwahahahahahahahahaha!

that was waaay funnier than the crack i was going to make!
11/16/2005 10:41:26 AM · #10
Its the borders. :)

(Oh, and all the other stuff Robert mentioned too.)
11/16/2005 11:15:05 AM · #11
Originally posted by ScottK:

Its the borders. :)

(Oh, and all the other stuff Robert mentioned too.)


Border smorders...if you look at ribbon winners it's 50/50 on borders, so unless they be ugly or something they have little impact. I think titles carry more weight, at least in a potentially positive way.

Yeah, on my night shot the boder is strong - black and gold are Pgh colors ya know!
11/16/2005 11:18:30 AM · #12
Originally posted by bear_music:



Yah, 3 big differences. You've identified two; sharpness and his has more lights on in the buildings that are dark in yours. The third big difference is the patterns on the water; his is a 15-second exposure, yours a half-second exposure. So he has gauzy, epehemeral water where you have sharply-delineated water, wavelets and reflections both. Also his sky is a little more pelasing, probably due solely to the longer exposure.

It's very interesting; leave out the sharpness issue, which you've explained, and the other differences are subtle but important.

Referring to your comments re: the cropping of the day shot, my problem is that the image is divided very nearly into two zones, water and the rest, and nearly half the image is given over to an area that really isn't contributing anything detail-wise to the image. So overall it feels a little cramped on top to me. Of course that's just my take.

They both are very nice shots.

Robt.


As i went to sleep last night i meant to check his exposure. 15 seconds..i know his water is nicer, now I know how he did it!

I will be in the city tonight (going to see the Radio City Rockettes!) and might talk my wife into stopping by for another image. I got the QR in my pocket right now! The remote release...still looking, but i have a timer!

Of course last Saturday it was 60 some degrees. Tonight 29 and an inch of snow in the forecast.

This friday would be the perfect night to get shots - It is the annual Light Up Night, the start of the holiday season, but I have to work 3:30-12 and i'm sure by 1 am things will be back to being too dark.


11/18/2005 09:23:36 AM · #13
Just found this thread (a couple days late, as always!)... thought I'd add a few random thoughts.

First off, I wanted to publicly apologize to Prof_Fate for shooting this vantage point in the first place, knowing ahead of time that he was planning to submit a shot from there. Chris had asked my opinion of some shots he had taken during the challenge week, prior to submitting, so I did know he was likely using this spot.

When this challenge first came up, I knew instantly that this was what I wanted to shoot also (long before getting Chris's note). I debated whether to use this location quite a bit before I went ahead with it. My reasoning was that my knowledge of his shot would have in no way affected the entries in the challenge had I not known about it. Had he not PM'd me, we still would have both had a shot from the same location.

Long blithering apology, I know, but I do want folks to know that I wasn't in any way trying to outshine him, so to speak, or steal any of his thunder by using the same location.

It did make for a bit of an interesting experiment, too, seeing what an impact night shots vs. day shots have with voters. Of my 7 top finishers, 4 of them are night shots! It just seems that night shots do very well here.

Anyway, a few notes about the shot. I did mine at 8:00 at night, and I must have been lucky that a few more lights were on in the city on that particular night. I like using very long exposures on these for the reasons Bear mentioned... it gives a nice feel to the water, and it just seems like the colors jump out better. And I can use a smaller aperture to keep things pretty sharp.

I'll set the camera up on a tripod, and use a remote trigger to snap the exposure so there's no camera shake. With my D100 (that doesn't have an IR remote) I used to simply set the timer to go off after 5 seconds or so, so that I wouldn't be bumping it.

Tonight is Light-Up night in Pittsburgh, so it really is tempting to go down and get another shot from here. With a zillion people heading down there, though, I'll probably be eating nachos and watching TV here at home, instead :) Also, they'll most likely have the stadiums lit up, and that has a negative impact on the lighting of the city, too.

As for the "seedy characters," that's another story in itself! When I got there that night, I was the only person at the overlook. Shortly afterwards, a group of obnoxious, obscenity-spewing kids arrived. Luckily, it's dark enough there that I could pretty much go unnoticed while I shot the city from a couple hundred feet away.

Bad thing was that I had to walk right past them to get back to the car -- there's no other way out! I tried slipping by as quietly as possible, but they actually started yelling, "Hey man, take my picture!" in a smart-ass tone as I passed, so I got the heck out of there as quickly as I could. I breathed quite the sigh of relief when I got back to the car...!
11/18/2005 10:18:32 AM · #14
Chris, I wouldn't put too much stock into what the voters think. I like both shots (yours and Alan's). The lights of the night shot add color and reflections but the daylight shot stands well on its own.
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