RAF 158 Squadron memorial

[Bunty Plumchip]

DSCF2861 by Bunty Plumchip, on Flickr
Veterans of 158 Squadron of the RAF lay a wreath to old comrades at Lissett. The squadron flew Halifax bombers during WW2 from the old aerodrome in our village. Every year at the beginning of September a memorial service is held here by the squadron.


I just figured out how to post and looked at the picture again and wondered if this was a better crop, even though it takes out the point upon which the men are focussed?

DSCF2861-001 by Bunty Plumchip, on Flickr


And here the crop with verticals realigned realigned . There are actually no 180 degree verticals in the scene so a case of finding the point to relate to..

DSCF2861-001 by Bunty Plumchip, on Flickr

[Urbanflyer]

I think you have made this shot progressively better with your subsequent crops. Good thinking! And a kind gesture to these heroes.

[Tri Danimal]

I'm new to this so take it for what it is.

I think if you cropped down the top, and left the bottom alone or if you could expand it to see what the men are looking at. I think this is a shot where you need to have both the living members and the memorial of past members in the same frame. It drives home the point that brothers in arms is a lifetime bond. Just my thoughts.

[Manfred M]

+1 to Judith's comments. Your image has improved with each iteration as you cropped and straightened the shot.

As you are processing your images, have a look at both the skin tones have a bit of a magenta hue (a.k.a. a colour cast) and the scene looks just a tiny bit overexposed. These are also corrections you can look at making in your post-processing workflow.



One thing I could not easily correct for is the way you framed the shot; cutting off the man in the wheel chair's foot is a bit awkward. Had you included this when you shot the image, this would have given you a stronger result as well.

[rpcrowe]

Wonderful lads, all of them. They are the reason we are not speaking German right now. If you would like to read a really excellent book about the Battle of Britain and the events leading up to the Battle (including the Fall of France and the Dunkirk Evacuation) try this one for size.

The Battle of Britain, Five Months That Changed History; May - October 1940 by James Holland

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Battl...NQH3JY39STC2A&

[Bunty Plumchip]

Thank you very much everyone for your helpful comments. This even takes place annually in the church next door to our house, and this year I positioned myself outside the churchyard rather than attending the service which is always held outside- the church is 11th century and tiny. I had a great position, but gave it up for the professional and tv photographers.

I chose this frame to work on and show here because it was the clearest of the faces of the veterans, and I like the lines of the building and the heads- trying to make it the best it can be to get back into things.


Thanks again.

[rpcrowe]

I have found that often when photographing events like this, using exposure bracketing with the camera in burst mode will give me three choices as to exposure. (I don't know about other cameras but a Canon DSLR in bust mode when bracketing is selected will shoot three bracketed shops and then stop shooting until the shutter button is pressed again. The lighting in this shot is really quite tricky and not as straight forward as it may have seemed.

[Shadowman]

I agree about the crop in-camera, if the shot had been framed with a bit more forethought you could've saved yourself some of the fretting during post-processing. One thought or idea is to consider what composition would've really provided a salute to the veterans and one thought that would've honored the veterans would've been if you shot the scene from a lower angle, when you want to present a subject in a more dynamic way, position yourself so that you are looking up to them rather down on them but make sure you are not doing so awkwardly such as looking up their nose.

[Hanginon]

I agree with @Tri Danimal - what they are paying tribute to needs to be in the picture - as @rpcrowe mentioned, the world would be a very different place were it for men like this.

An extremely guarded secret of WWII (right up there with the atomic bomb), and also a huge part of the successful air war over England, was the Proximity Fuze. They had to engineer a vacuum tube (or "valve" as the English say) that could withstand the G forces of a canon shot, since the transistor didn't exist yet. Excellent Wiki here -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze