Afternoon
This is not much of a discussion on the actual image, for what it's worth, I had very mixed emotions about the shot, actually I do on quite a few of Kevin's shots. My very first response was eek! The processing was fairly extreme to my eye but looking deeper, I really liked the viewpoint, the lines, the structure of the machinery, all really beautifully captured, the processing for me detracted rather than enhanced the view and it felt to me that it became less of a photograph and more of a graphic image if that makes sense. I find with heavier HDR that images become "flat" contrast is lost and there seems to be a loss of depth.
Kevin is a big boy and I'm sure he is not going to be bothered by the opinions of random people on the internet, I will say that I respect his desire to push things though, as photographers or artists surely we can do no more than produce images that we ourselves are happy with and then stand by them? Positive or negative, we should be happy that we did what we did for ourselves, once we start producing images in order to gain the most approval then surely we have lost something? I will also say that displaying photographs to photographers is always going to be tricky, we all have an opinion on how we would do things but it's all theoretical, the opinions of people who are not looking at the technical aspects will always be different and in many cases more relevant, particularly if they are handing over cash and taking the prints home!
I'd have loved to have been at that shoot, I like industrial structures, I liked looking at other shots from the same venue, Dave I think it was, it's a stunning place for sure if you like that sort of thing, I know my shots wouldn't have employed the same processing techniques but that's not to say they would have been better or worse, just different, my interpretation of what I was seeing.
Anyway, back to taking photographs and learning from others, that's what it's all about isn't it?
Mat
Oops, I realise that the discussion was about the Heavy Metal shot, I was thinking of the Pump House shot, sorry for mixing up! I still stand by my comments though when talking about a lot of the shots from this location.