Red, White & Black

[escape]

Taken in Times Square. Background is a portion of a US flag light display across the street. Comments welcomed.
[IMG]IMG_6640 by pongo now, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Manfred M]

Conceptually, it is an interesting shot, but from a technical and compositional standpoint, it's not working all that well for me.

Let's start on the compositional side. The human visual system is primed to see bright areas of a scene and high contrast areas of a scene, so our eyes will tend to wander over to the bright and high contrast parts of the image on the left hand side. It takes effort to pull back to your subject. As you have posted this in the People & Pets thread, my assumption is that the person is your subject. A harder crop to eliminate some of the distractions on the left hand side would be where I would look.

Another common consideration in photography involving people (and animals or anything else that could be moving) is to allow more visual space in the direction that the person is looking towards to give the image more visual balance.

Both of these issues suggest a fairly hard crop of the material on the left hand side would be worth considering. Perhaps something along these lines.




The second is a technical consideration. This is a high dynamic range image and you have lost all shadow detail in the silhouette. Once you have gone black, you have lost all data in those areas of the image and there is absolutely no subtlety in that part of the shot. The blue shown in this screen shot taken of this image using Adobe Camera Raw shows where this occurs.



Is there a possibility that the scene had more shadow detail? The whites look quite gray, so that suggests the overall scene was a bit underexposed and looking at the histogram, I do see that you have a bit of headroom on the right hand side. I'm not sure it would have been enough, but some texture in the dark areas would be good.

[lovelife65]

I love this. Very fun, interesting, different.

[escape]

Thank you Manfred for your analysis.

[escape]

I love this. Very fun, interesting, different.

I like the umbrella tie trailing behind him. Thank you

[DanK]

I think this is a nice image. I prefer the original to Manfred's crop; I think the lines are more interesting and more balanced. I personally don't mind the blacked out area. It just makes it a silhouette, which I think is fine.

[Shadowman]

Nice concept.

[Rufus]

I would consider cropping the left hand side to point where the solhuette starts so as to keep the full shape of the umbrella and crop out the band of black on the right to give something like this.



I agree it would be a stronger image if there were more of the stripes to the right of the subject.

[bje07]

I personnaly prefer the original but may be the idea to eliminate black RH part is possible too.

[vaez]

nice photo i agree with crop Manfred

[selig1656]

It's all about creativity and the attempt to convey,interesting and I needed some time to digest , but indeed I like it as you presented it. Albeit Manfred's crop does add a great dimension of movement.

[escape]

I do like David's crop. It's neat, compact, and balanced. I prefer the original with the blackband. The blackband creates an element of interest. I think it would cause the viewer to pause a moment longer.

[Dave Humphries]

I do like David's crop. It's neat, compact, and balanced. I prefer the original with the blackband. The blackband creates an element of interest. I think it would cause the viewer to pause a moment longer.

I like the LHS of David's crop, but prefer the original on RHS.
For me the umbrella has to be identifiable and that is lost if too closely cropped.

Cheers,
Dave

[escape]

We all view photos differently. A crop would alter how I see the photo. I view it metaphorically.
The flag in the background is equally divided by a vertical line. The times we are in. The silhouette has traveled some distance in adverse weather. With mouth gaping open, he is on the verge of entering the black band, the unknown with its endless posibilities. (I think I just spun a pretty good yarn there.)

[escape]

Another one.[IMG]IMG_6645-3 by pongo now, on Flickr[/IMG]