Prow & Anchor.....

[LenR]

Have been revisiting some older captures of late. This one of a vintage Thames barge in St Katherines Docks London.
Comments welcome.

Thames Barge by Len Reeves, on Flickr

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Len,

When I see a subject like this, I might well take a shot from the position I first noticed it, but then, time permitting*, I would see if it can be improved.

The issues I would consider here are that anchor and the background are similar in colour and distance from the camera. Also there's a lot of distracting detail in the hull and river surface.

Ideally I would look for an alternate shooting position that allows me to isolate the subject from the background, perhaps shooting from one side or the other, maybe from closer if possible, looking up or down upon it to alter the background entirely. Then zoom, or crop to remove any new distractions.

That said, I suspect not much, if any, of this advice would have been possible at this location.

* These days I find I must either go out to take photos, or to sightsee. Combining the two achieves little more than a record of the trip, which may be all you or I require, but it is unlikely to provide a great shot, unless you get lucky - e.g. had the sun been lighting the anchor but the hull be in shade, or similar. Or you can achieve the same (probably at night) with off-camera flash.

The other alternative would be to convert the photograph in to a piece of art, ways I might tackle that might include cropping, cloning, blurring and local adjustments to boost the subject's prominence in frame and diminish that of the hull and water. The least I might attempt is to "photoshop repair" all the damaged hull paintwork and crop top and bottom to remove the blue paintwork and water below a line across point of bow.

Hope that's helpful,
Dave

[LenR]

Hi Dave, thanks for your comments. As you have surmised, shooting positions were limited, particularly in using a tripod.