Had a wonderful day. Found this abandoned railroad tunnel, built in 1858. It was awesome! Went to the Luray Caverns--they were incredible! Got back too late to look at the photos and do a decent job of editing.
It's not doing too well right now (and there doesn't seem to be any upward trends happening...
Oh well, it was a great tunnel and a wonderful day!
[Aug. 13th, 2009 09:26:56 PM]
I liked the silhouetted feel to it--so I just brought out the smallest amount of detail to the inside of the tunnel. I like this quite a bit, but it's doing very poorly. How should this have been photographed/processed differently to make it have wider appeal?
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Place: 53 out of 93 Avg (all users): 5.4444 Avg (commenters): 5.5000 Avg (participants): 5.4444 Avg (non-participants): 5.4444 Views since voting: 1087 Views during voting: 242 Votes: 135 Comments: 8 Favorites: 0
First impression: I like the silhouettes, father and son "story line" is very cute. I think there was potential to make more out of the image but there seem to be very little processing done besides resizing.
Technicals and composition: I really like the framing and the angle that emphasized the height of the tunnel and really forces me to look at the silhouettes. The exposure seems to be off -- the highlights in the trees and rocks are blown out and the shadows are too dark to see all the intricate brick work. The out of focus top of the tunnel with a blue tint is a bit distracting, I cannot stop looking there and I wish I could focus more on either the father and the son or the brickwork. Lack of noise for ISO of 1600 is quite impressive.
Final thoughts: While I like a lot of the elements of the photo, I find the blown out rocks and trees very distracting. I agree that some dodging inside the tunnel and burning the trees and the rocks would have provided more details to admire. This looks like a perfect candidate for HDR, although you really have to plan for that kind of shot in advance. Some shadows/highlights adjustments might have helped as well.
A 5.4 is not a bad showing. It's just not a knock-em dead one either.
A little burning might have helped on the trees outside. I think there is enough detail in them that some careful editing could have pulled some of it in. Perhaps a little dogding inside the tunnel, in order to show off just a bit more of that nice brickwork. Not too bright, however, don't want to ruin the mood. As I said in my in-challenge comment, many of us had issues with overly bright highlights vs dark darks. If nothing else, it was a very educational challenge.
Looks like you had the same problem as I did. It's hard to capture such a wide dynamic range as the inside of a tunnel and the brightness outside. It's an interesting shot and I'm not holding the slightly blown highlights against it.
I think a different title would have worked better. Like maybe something father-son-ish about the big great outdoors. The brightness at the top of the tunnel is a bit distracting.
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