Around the Neighbourhood

[casil403]

Hi all,
I'm new to the website and am just starting out exploring a passion I have for photography. I was wondering if anyone would like to put in their $.002/ regarding this image I took yesterday while out for a stroll in in my neighbourhood. I thought it looked kind of neat and something you don't see everyday in a big city. Thanks a bunch!

[jjeling]

Welcome to the forum! If you stick around here you will learn a lot from these guys.
As far as the picture is concerned, it is a great subject and has a lot of potential. If you can, I would go back and stick around for a while taking different shots. I can see a door handle in the bottom right corner. Might want to get rid of that. Also the cab of the old ford? is awesome too, the support in the middle of it doesnt help though. Might try putting this into black and white. Great textures here.

[Marko]

This is quite a nice shot. JJ is right - great textures here. He's also right about the support beam, it is a bit of a distraction. Sometimes though - you take the best shot you can get based on some of the environment that we cannot see. Other times it pays to play the angles.
Hope that helps - marko

Oh yeah... and welcome!

[tirediron]

Welcome - nice image. Agree with jj; this image has huge potential as a mono or sepia conversion!

[Mad Aussie]

You're proving very quickly that you have a great eye for a shot there Casil!

[casil403]

Thanks everyone for all your great input...I am learning some stuff already and am seeing it all! I am going to go back there this week and get some different angles to see what else this shot has to offer based on your feedback. Thanks again!

[Mad Aussie]

Just don't lean on that chop top, 3 window coupe there Casil. Looks like the roof isn't welded down yet

Remember distractions ... your background is as important as your foreground and subject

[casil403]

Hi again everyone,

Well I gave the shop another go this morning. I knocked on the door and the owner came out and invited me in to check out the shop from the inside...wow what a place! He restores old cars (currently is doing a '67 barracuda and '56 chevy) for a living and he redesigned the building to look like that...before it was just a plain old garage. Says he gets people there almost every weekend taking wedding shots. He had all kinds of neat stuff inside his shop but he looked busy so I didn't want to intrude too much. Otherwise I would have taken shots inside the building.
Anyhow, I worked the angles from just about every one I could think of...couldn't do much about the post...darn it...guess I could have asked him to chop it down??? Here's a recap:

[Mad Aussie]

The upright post in your first photo was only a distraction because of where it was in the frame and the way it leaned etc. The same post could well be a vital element in a different composition.

Very cool that you asked the owner. Perhaps you could take some nice shots inside and give him a few for his trouble?

You seem to be getting a very deep DOF, which is often good of course, but I wonder if a shorter DOF on some shots might help to isolate a particular subject more.
I say this because your photos don't show anything as a particular subject, which although some people seem to avoid like the plague I sometimes think everything in the photo becomes the 'subject' if it's done right.

Perhaps some shots where you make something in the photo the definite subject might be nice? That old 3 window coupe perhaps? The old fridge? The upright post?

Also you might get an interesting shot by shooting through the windows of the coupe from the inside looking out.

[jlabel]

About the first picture there´s a lot of things you could better, one is the composition, OK that the house is old and stuff, but, you probably ve seen something special and wanted to show it to us. Since everything is on light and everything is on focus, I cant loot at anything special, everything is too much information to bear. Plus the angle is not a nice one, cuts too much stuff, like the corner of the door is missing, and at the other corner seems to have something popping up like a car´s door handle.