A minibus hit a car at the end of our block and I happened to be carrying my camera looking for dpchallenge material on the way to get my daughter from school.
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Thanks sfalice for the in-depth critique! I've requested one each time and this is the first I've gotten. I purposely tried to make the car and van 50-50 centered, but after looking at it more, I agree with you that cutting out the uncrumpled part of the car on the left side to make the crop with the thirds would be more visually interesting.
I think I stand by my DOF this time, since I wanted to make sure the damage on the car was easily visible with the van being the more prominent and more obviously damaged in-focus object. However, I think it would still have shown on the car if I had ratcheted the aperture down to f/2.8 and would have given a more desireable OOF effect to bring out the bus even more.
I also agree that I should have fired off a couple of shots since I was just standing around watching things get cleaned up. Maybe I was overconfident in the sharpness since the speed was a little faster than the standard "minimum" for the lens length (1/135 @ 135mm).
Thanks again for your help on dissecting this photo!
You have an image here that meets the Challenge nicely but didn't score very well. So, I'm going to pick it apart a little and see what happens.
First, I'd suggest that this image presently is just about half 'n half car and van. I think you could crop down on the car quite a bit and make it a 1/3 - 2/3 image which is usually visually more interesting. (say from the bend of the hood on the left and down to the rear-view mirror on the van. That would give more visual impact (sorry) to the image.
On the DOF debate, I'm in the middle. Either the car should be extremely OOF or the whole thing should be good and sharp. Personally, I'd favor the 2nd approach. And while the van is in pretty good focus, it isn't tack-sharp. Sometimes, with the nice camera you have, using burst mode can give you one good image out of many.
Okay, one last thing. Depending on how good you are with Photoshop (or equivalent) you might play around with levels, contrast and curves. This would add more lights and darks to your image and give it more interest.
Finally (I know, I know, I said I was done) I see what is probably a police car in the background. An image with that as the center of attraction might also have been interesting to look at (and for our viewers to relate to).
All of the above are just hints on how to get the viewer (voter) to look at your image long enough to really appreciate the story you are trying to tell.
Good luck in your future challenges on DPC. I look forward to seeing more of your work.
It's interesting that I got one comment suggesting deeper DOF to get the car more in focus, and one suggesting narrower DOF to get the car more out of focus :) After seeing the result, I personally would have preferred the car a little more out of focus, and I wanted to do more with it since I had actually gotten there before the fire fighters.
The bus was initially on it's side and I got a couple of shots of that too, but since I was carrying only my 135mm lens for something entirely different, I was very limited. I would have posted the tipped over bus, but I thought it was too "documentary" and not "artsy" enough :)
Oh, and amazingly enough, driver and the two kids in the day care minibus walked away, the 3-yr old passenger in the car was uninjured. The woman driving the car had some scrapes and bumps from the glass and metal coming in around her, but was otherwise fine.
I had this same idea but don't get out much and even if I were out - what are the odds? I hope you weren't in this...great capture - I think I may have liked to see more of it though, the perspective is great, just taken from a little further back, or less zoom as to show a little bit more on even one, not necessarily both vehicles. Good image and meets the challenge :)
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