I wanted the look of very old, slow cameras from 100+ years ago to go with the subject matter. So I shot at 1/50 giving it that slightly blurred look you see in very old photos. The forge was at a renaissance fair.
I have entered two purposely blurred photos in challenges before and paid dearly for doing so, but this photo captures exactly what I was going for so hopefully it comes across to the voters as intent and not error.
Channel mixer and curves to finalize as BW, that's all.
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Place: 152 out of 160 Avg (all users): 3.9799 Avg (commenters): 4.1875 Avg (participants): 3.8354 Avg (non-participants): 4.0750 Views since voting: 894 Views during voting: 279 Votes: 199 Comments: 16 Favorites: 0
This is the weirdest shot in the challenge. This headless guy looks like he has a leg growing instead of the right arm (hence no head). :) Strangely, though, this shot captivates me somehow. The same I find Kurosawa movies attractive although the culture in them is so distant. 9
OMG where's his head?? Seriously, the crop is too tight and the whole photo is badly out of focus. It would be nice if the forger had a head. Poor guy.
Sure is fire in working for man! Great idea for the challenge. It is OOF and maybe a slightly different angle. But I still say for a fire challenge the fire has to be in color. For these reasons I am giving my base a 5
Sadly, with the head not visible and the arm cropped out of the shot, the figure to the left becomes the main focus as the eye is trying to figure out how it makes sense visually. That is what hurts this photo in my opinion.
Another thing that I think would make this better is if there were more of the forge shown (if the photo was cropped / framed looser on the bottom). But that is not a main concern to me. I can also imagine how some might now like the soft focus - but I do in fact like it. I think it gives the feel of a dated postcard or photograph, which the monochrome helps to achieve. Overall I think this is an image that has a lot of potential but does not really live up to it. If you have the chance to go back and retake or recrop the shot, I would love to see how it would be with some improvements worked in.
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