Thanks for the observations K1W1. I kind of thought the tree gave you the feeling of being far away from the jump, giving you the feeling of looking at it from afar. I have plenty of pictures of the jumps close up, and just liked the way that one came out. I do see though that for someone who would like to purchase a picture for a magazine, website, etc, the cropped shot would be much better.
As for the other picture, I was not able to get on the other side of the track. That was the only option I had, and yes, it was shooting into the sun. Most of the photos did not turn out well from that angle/location, but for some reason I really thought that one turned out well. Maybe it is just me though. I have a whole bunch more photos that I will take a closer look at and try some post processing this weekend. I'll throw them up in my old "Dirtbikes" thread. When I do I would appreciate your opinions.
PS: Thanks for the response as well Rooz. You posted as I was typing my post.
I hope that you don't mind and I will delete this if you want.
Both those shots caused me problems for several reasons and as it's Saturday and raining I'm sitting in front of the PC playing. I've done some experiments on your shots and I'll explain what I have tried to achieve (as opposed to what I have done).
For the jump shot that tree or whatever on the left does nothing for the photo and the marshal sitting looking uninterested doesn't help either imo.
I tried two things the first was to make the shot vertical just to see how the impression of height worked. Having the rider appearing to be jumping over the sign (in height) seems to me to make it more dramatic. For the second one I rotated the image to get the signs more or less straight and again cut out the extra stuff that imo doesn't need to be there. Rotating the image also visually makes the slope look steeper (angle of the fence posts) and more dramatic.
Shot two sort of hurt my eyes all that really dark and light. It appears to me that you were on the wrong side of the corner, it looks like the rider is turning right which means he is always going to be looking away from you and it also looks like you were shooting into the sun. Obviously you can't always be in the perfect place but I think that grass up above the front mudguard may have been a better spot if you were allowed there. For that photo I just cropped it to get as much of the background out as I could and also changed it so the rider is riding into the photo rather than being centred. I also got rid of that tape coming out of the back of the bike.
K1W1, did you add some sort of sharpening as well? They look very over sharpened, especially the trees in the backgound!
Jason
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, a soldier dies but once."-2Pac
Yes I was just playing in CS5. I was really trying to see what the cropping would be like more than anything else the files are tiny so so you definitely wouldn't sharpen them if you wanted to use them for anything.
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Yes I was just playing in CS5. I was really trying to see what the cropping would be like more than anything else the files are tiny so so you definitely wouldn't sharpen them if you wanted to use them for anything.
Just making sure my eyes werent messing with me!
Rich(RAWPAW), I really love that image... very "smooth" and I love the sun reflection on the side of the birds head!
Jason
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, a soldier dies but once."-2Pac