My Recent Trip to NYC
Coming in from the Airport, waiting for the N or W train.

145th St and Amsterdam Ave

145th Subway

Flatiron Building

From when I was home
One of the many closed factories, my dad worked here when it was Roper for several years until it closed in the 80's. Also the original factory that was there David Bradley Farm Implements is where my town gets it's name.

Another closed factory, this one was a furniture manufacturer.

Exciting downtown Kankakee

Paramount Movie Theater

Blues Cafe, well technically it's just in Kankakee not downtown

They are some pretty sweet pictures, I enjoy simplicity.

Thanks, that's what I tend to try to do sometimes, that's why I miss my macro lens so much.

There are some nice compositions in there, but the black and white ones aren't working for me. There's not enough contrast in the shots - they look like things that were balanced okay in colour then were desaturated rather than shots that were specifically designed to be in black and white.

You see this problem all the time on television where a fantasy programme decides to do a 1940s episode (Smallville and Charmed spring to mind) and they film in black and white. They don't use shadows and highlights correctly to balance the shot and they end up with too much grey. The old masters of black and white were phenomenal at this kind of thing. Just have a look at the top images from Nosferatu, it's all about the shadows and the light:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=...ch+Images&gbv=2

I love this classic image:

http://www.trhonline.com/nosferatu.jpg

The shadow on the face and the front of the jacket brings out the bright light on the face.

My favourite image is the 145th Subway, which looks like it should have a ghost-train pulling into the station!

Thank you for your compliment and comment, yea I think that's the problem with digital, it post-processes in the camera, I need to shoot in Raw and expirement with the black and white in Raw. Yea all the black and whites except the one from NYC were shot in one day, and it was cloudy and about an hour before sunset, so I don't think that helped anything. I think that's one of my challenges with my switch from film to digital. I need to bracket more because I'm not dealing with a roll of film where I'm limited with the number of pictures I can take.

I'm pretty much in love with the Paramount Theatre one.

The lights are great in contrast with the dark color around them, in that case I think the use of black and white was really effective.

Keep it up, man, you're doing awesome.

The first one reminds me of this train station over in Germany.

They're all really cool looking!!!!

So my busy schedule has kept me from getting out and shooting some photo so I decided randomly at 12:30AM to go out in the freezing weather and snow and shoot some photos so enjoy, just remember I froze my fingers and toes being out in the weather for 20mins, lol.

I love those photos! They are great. I think my favorite would probably be the third from the top. It has beautiful focusing, the colors are great and they really bring out the sort of cold/wet feeling on the metal. My other favorite would have to be the last one looking up at the moon. Wonderful placement.

Thank you, and the last one I worked very hard to get that, it took me several minutes to get it just right, I saw it and I had to get that shot.

I like the fourth one the most:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v615/pat.../IMG_1423sm.jpg

The lighting is very nice and the colours work well.

Being picky:
the slight skew on the orientation lets the picture down a bit
I would have pulled the shot to the left more - the area of brightness on the right unsettles the composition, but shifting to the left could have removed it and got a better fit with the golden ratio.

I like them though. The top one is very nice, I like the way the streetlamps appear to have become stars.

There is a general problem with digital photography that I've noticed, where people take very close-up shots of objects. These images look new and interesting because classical photographers, in days of expensive film, didn't take that kind of image. It's easier to make detailed pictures look good because the clarity of the image immediately makes it intriguing, but without the traditional skills of picture composition they feel a bit like junk food: really nice for the moment, but they leave you feeling hungry for a proper feast.

I'm not saying that you are falling into this fully, but I thought I'd point it out early in case you slip into that trap!

Great work on the pictures, they're really cool looking.

Thank you, I really thank you for your honesty, that's the only way I can get better, I once had teacher that made a good point about a production class I was in. That he could pat us all on the back and say everything we did was great or he could be honest with us so we knew what to improve on.
As far as the skew, I'm not sure if that's a visual trick because I swear it was straight when I took it, but I see it too. Also I guess I was going for the symetry which would work ok in a daytime shot where the lights not on, becuase it really draws your eye to the center.

The star effect is something I discovered a few years ago when I got it and I was talking to a friend of mine about it and how I got it. Orignally I had thought it was my UV filter, but what it really is, is aperature, the higher the aperature the more focused and clear an image is. You can do the same thing by squinting your eyes. If that makes any sense, lol.

For close-ups, I'm a sucker for macro images, I dearly miss my macro lens, but I can see what you are saying. I try to keep composistion in mind, but I can see the trap you speak of and I'm actually going to make mental note of it so when I do those shots I will watch my composistion.

Well today was a brief break from our so far crappy winter and so I went out after work.









I'm still on the fence about the composistion of the last one. I also discovered tonight that I really like shooting in Raw, I shot a few in Raw and I love the white balance I do when I put it on my computer instead of letting the camera do it, I think I may shoot in Raw all the time.

1: this is lovely. A really nice shot, although I'm not sure if the colour is working to its advantage. I realise it's probably natural ambient light, but the empty sky looks too warm with the orangey hues. It's probably just the perspective, but the building looks a it skewed.

2: personally I try to avoid obvious writing in images if I can. The eye is automatically drawn to it so quickly that it tends to upset the rhythm of the piece. I like the composition, but again there seems to be a tilt on the camera!

3: this photo of the roads works really well for me. The abstract composition and the recognisable road markings creates a pleasing sense of cognitive dissonance. Being picky, I'd have preferred the light splashes on the left of the image to be higher up: they are currently at a middle height and look too balanced among the rest of the diagonals.

4: Chicago Work Out logo. This one doesn't really do much for me. The logo is okay, but there isn't really any context for why I'm looking at the image of it. What was your contribution to the image? What makes this a photo you have taken, rather than just the work of a logo designer and the person who put it there?

5: Overgrown bench/pipes/dark-thing. Nice. I like it. It works well as a thematic study of the nature/man relationship. The foreground where the plants are overcoming the dark object nicely balances with the view of the city that is obscured by the overgrown slope. I'm not sure that the composition is doing you a huge amount of favours, but it's not too bad either and there's enough going on to make the image work.

6: Life Guard. There's that tilt in the camera again! I really like this one, other than that tilt. The apparent symmetrical image degrades the more you look, presenting a nice balance between light and dark on either side. The blue glow behind the windows and the prominent door on the left seem part of a larger, but unknown, narrative. The words 'life guard' suggest that the building occupies a spot between the light and dark, life and death. Was any of this intentional? Good stuff. This is one of those cases where text draws the eye, but you wanted the eye drawn continually back to that area anyway, so it works on your side.

7: Bus stop. I'm not sure what you were going for with this one, but it doesn't really do anything for me. The composition seems slapdash, the image doesn't seem to have much deliberation or intention behind it.

8: Blurred car lights. It's a nice effect, and I quite like the dark lower half of the image, but I feel like I've seen blurred headlights so many times now that it really needs to be something special to turn my head. This is another case where the limited palette of colours, and the warm orange tones, aren't really helping you. Can you get a more extensive range of colour picked up by your equipment?

9: Parking meter. It's okay, but not the best of the bunch; however, I do really like the white shine on the top left of the meter. The focus for that part is spot-on and the light gives a lovely sense of the texture. You could probably have zoomed in on that area, gone for a really purely compositional image with very little recognisable figuration, and produced a stronger final shot.

Out of the bunch I like the 'life guard', the road, and the skyline pictures the best. They each have flaws, but they each have some very strong elements.

1. I like the color a little, but this is one of my favorites. I think the color could look better if I had shot this in RAW which I have discovered is nice, white balacing is easier to do, the camera doesn't always pick the right balance.

2. The tilt is offically my fault on this one, apperently I didn't have it as level as I thought. As for the text I intentionally put and framed it with the text, I think my thinking was your eye would draw to the text and then the line formed by the gate it's self would lead you toward the road, and then down, but this may be one of those it looked good in my head ones.

3.This is also one of my favorites, this one I shot in RAW to give you an idea, I should show what the camera's white balance would have been, but I know my camera and I know what it would have looked like. When I framed this one I intentionally only wanted to see the road and the cars, no curbs, grass, exits, or signs.

4. Not sure what I was going for here, I'm kind of sucker for painted things on concrete and sides of buildings, don't ask me, lol, but your points are very true.

5. As I'm looking at it, I'm thinking a lower angle would have been better, on a dryer day I would have no problem getting on my hands and knees to get the lower angle, but I wasn't really looking to get sand and water on me or my camera. As I was walking though I saw this and had to shoot it, I just lauhged becuase this little bench had been over come by sand and weeds.

6. Ok the tilt thing, as I looked into it, it comes from any time I move where the hot shoe goes onto the tripod, it will slip just inward enough to cause the tilt, I will ensure this doesn't happen in the future, lol. I was going for semmetry, now I'm going to call the life and death thing a happy coincidence, but the light coming from inside was intentionally I could see it with my naked eye.

7. The bus stop sign, I guess it does more for me being that I'm a transportation nerd, if you will. I love photographing transportation in general. The composistion looked better in my head, lol, but basically I was just doing your average rule of thirds, perhaps if I had shot it from the other way and included some skyline it might have made it look more interesting.

8. Wish I had shot this in RAW. Also another looked really good in my head one, it was supposed to look like the cars were coming at me, but the curve in the light doesn't achive that affect. As for my equipment I have a Canon XTi, if I shoot in RAW I get a lot better pictures because I can go home and white balance it properly.

9.True, I think this one is more of a victim of me playing around with focus, I was actually trying to get all the parking meters in a row in the shoot, but I could get that shot framed right and the wind funneling down the street was making it diffcult, so I just did a more close up of the meter it's self.

It took me a few days to reply to this because I really wanted to sit down and take the same level of time you gave the critique, I really do honestly thank you.

I'm glad it's helpful! I always worry that I'll offend people when I get my 'art critic' head on, but I always do genuinely write things with the intention of helping people get even better results in the future. It's lovely to discuss these with someone who is so receptive.

I look forward to the next batch!

Just out of curosity do you use a Mac, because I'm at my internship looking at this on a Mac and the colors look slightly different, it's like all my pictures have more of an orangish tint, I know Macs tend to show more color than PC's. Also I really do enjoy your critique, it's the only way to get better, now when I go out and shoot I know what I need to work on.

No, I use a PC. I think my colour settings might be a bit off because I'm viewing the images at work at the moment and they look a bit brighter. That's the problem with digital photography - it's only ever as good as the screens!

The screen issue is true, with film you have the negative and you can really truely tell how well you exposed. Yea actually late tomorrow night I'm doing a shoot with a friend that should be fun we are shooting in the 3 locations downtown, one from the roof of his dad's condo just west of Downtown, then down one of the streets in the heart of downtown, and if he can work it out with the building owner of the Merchandise Mart (Just north of the Loop) we will be shooting on the roof there. So I should have some stuff to post.

Alright here they are.



I know the glare is there I still like the photo I just have to get rid of that glare.

I don't have time to say extensively why, or to write much, but that Blue Chicago one is bloody fantastic on many levels. That is a superb photo.

I don't have anything real to say criticism wise, but your photos are really, really amazing. They're just all pretty, with nice angels and awesome photo quality and stuff. Yeah.

Thank you guys, and yes Blue Chicago is probably one of my favorite photos I have ever taken, I love it for some many reasons.

Here was the other part of my day the lakefront walk.


The three big things above the Sears towers are the news helicopters covering the protest.

The middle one is my favorite. The colors flow very nicely together. Keep up the great work. *thumbs up*

Thank you.

This thread just reminded me that I need to bring my camera out more. I only ever do pictures of gigs and stuff which would usually be put up on music sites and stuff.

I need some scenery ones, show everyone a bit of Belfast.

My section

The beginning of the slaughter

Cubs fans being Cubs fans, after the Red's got there one homerun, everyone started yelling throw it back, so it started with one ball coming back to the field and soon it was like 10 or so, lol.

Wish I would have exposed this better so you could see the white W flag.

So I finally have a week off and I really wanted to go to NYC, but I don't really have the money so instead I'm staying in the Chicagoland area.
Cabrini Green housing projects soon to be all North Town Village

Chinatown

Chinatown Red Line

Wicker Park


Lincoln Park

The Result of staying up for like 13 or so hours playing GTA 4, I needed some fresh air. After not airing my tires on my bike and working harder than I needed to I got these shots, then saw the free air station, lol, made the trip back easier.

Not to keep dragging this thread up, but I didn't want to creat another one, anway here are some photos from my recent random trip to Cleveland. It pays to have a family friend who's going to flight school and has his license and is trying to get flight hours in. We went to the city of Rock, Cleveland.
Cleveland



Around Toledo, OH


Near Joliet, IL