Camera Labs

These pictures are purposely made grainy with textured edited through Photoshop... I just need some serious critiquing with the exposure and any tone curve, and any thing else... before i upload these pictures to 1x.com and print them for my portfolio...please be critical with the comments, because i need to know whether there is anything i need to do to improve the pictures...thanks!

PS: All of the photos have my watermark in it, but when I upload them, it won't be there.





















This one was shot in Central Park, NY =

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La Familia: Canon REBEL Xsi * EF-S IS 18-55 * Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG * Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM * Canon 580EX II Speedlite E-TTL II * HOLGA 120CFN Medium Format Viewfinder * Velbon - El Carmagne 530
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No cc anyone?

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who needs friends when you have a Rebel?

La Familia: Canon REBEL Xsi * EF-S IS 18-55 * Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG * Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM * Canon 580EX II Speedlite E-TTL II * HOLGA 120CFN Medium Format Viewfinder * Velbon - El Carmagne 530
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Hello Avlis
Beautiful set that would be my opinion, I'm no expert for major edited photos threw PS... the sepia work is really nice, so does the B/W photos.I love the last 2 shots.
Sorry I can't be of better expertise... I can Imagine you spent hours on them.

Thanks low, ! Any comment bad or good is appreciated.

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who needs friends when you have a Rebel?

La Familia: Canon REBEL Xsi * EF-S IS 18-55 * Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG * Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM * Canon 580EX II Speedlite E-TTL II * HOLGA 120CFN Medium Format Viewfinder * Velbon - El Carmagne 530
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I really like your PP style in these and there's not much I can suggest to improve them.

If you put a gun to my head to force out a criticism then I'd suggest you scale back on the vignetting a notch.

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Panasonic G3: 9-18mm, 14mm, 20mm, 45mm

Kim, thanks for the suggestion .

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who needs friends when you have a Rebel?

La Familia: Canon REBEL Xsi * EF-S IS 18-55 * Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG * Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM * Canon 580EX II Speedlite E-TTL II * HOLGA 120CFN Medium Format Viewfinder * Velbon - El Carmagne 530
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Hi Avlis,

With such "radical" processing, any kind of "technical" suggestions are really more revealing of taste than anything else.

Personally I really like your edits - there is an interesting vintage/grunge feel to them that would fit well on a poster for a horror-movie or an early Balck Sabbath album..lol. And you are clearly not trying to maintain a "photo-realistic" perspective, but a rather artistic interpretation.

I strongly suspect that these images would be a lot more powerful in large prints. These thumbnails we are looking at, are obviously not doing them justice. Subtleties are lost.

My personal favorite is the one with all the pillars, primarily because it's the composition that is the most "unusual" of them all.

Given your obvious talent in post-processing, you might ask yourself: how well do these compositions stand on their own - i.e. are they "strong" pictures without the grungification, texturization, noisification etc. If you did a more "traditional" edit of them..color, sharpness, contrast..that sort of thing, how powerful would they be? Are the images given their impact mostly or even purely by the edits?

I don't have the answer and taste vary hugely - but you could perhaps explore that line of thinking to guide you to images that you might find are even more compelling.

The "binoculars on beach" shot: I have this thing about deliberately tilting the horizons, which are very much in vogue these days - and my opinion is: do it like you mean it, so there is no doubt that it's done on purpose. This image - for me - is on the edge of that..lol. But that's just me.

I can only guess at whether it's deliberate or if it's unconscious on your part, but this series has a tendency toward centered symmetry - your horizons are in the middle on many of them. I'm not evangelist when it comes to the "rule of thirds", but I imagine that a few of them might come across even stronger if you had dropped to your knees and dipped the horizon up or down on one or two of them.

Thank you for a very enjoyable view of some very artistic images that clearly took a lot of very deliberate work on your part. I greatly enjoy them and I imagine that they will be well received on 1X - even if they are rather particular about the shots they allow on their site.

Cheers

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Nikon stuff and other stuff, but not nearly as much stuff as I really want!

Hi Avlis

I, personally am not a huge fan of textures, but looking beyond that, you really have some excellent work here and i totally agree with LahLahSr, these would look much better, enlarged.

I love the composition in all of them actually especially the pillars, but mostly the boat in front of the house ....... all those conflicting straight and curvy lines made my eyes go mental and i couldn't stop looking at it.

Loved the cross-processed look of the binoculars, but i too have an obsession with straight horizons. (my Dad beat it into me as a kid! ) but i guess the crooked look is what you were going for, so here it works just fine.

My only critisism (and this is only due to personal taste) is the textures. It has given you great results and obviously it was the look you were going for, but i feel i takes away some of the emphasis of what a talented photographer you are. I see good photoshop work instead of superbly composed and taken photographs.

But like i said this is purely a question of my own personal taste.

Really enjoyed seeing them, i'm now gonna waste an hour at work looking through your Flickr.

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Pete

Thanks Lah, for the in depth analysis...I got my inspiration for these shots and post processing from dreams or dream-like images. I felt that our dreams are filled with images we see in a daily basis, but are always very vague and dark because we cannot fully remember the sharp details of the images. As for myself, the last image of my dreams are usually filled with a mixture of abstract and reality, so that's where I got my inspiration from the radical PP of using the vintage/textured/noise PP.

I'm glad you enjoyed the set. I have other sets that are less PP, and I will post them soon too. I just needed some critiques before i printed them for my portfolio..

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who needs friends when you have a Rebel?

La Familia: Canon REBEL Xsi * EF-S IS 18-55 * Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG * Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM * Canon 580EX II Speedlite E-TTL II * HOLGA 120CFN Medium Format Viewfinder * Velbon - El Carmagne 530
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Thanks Dr., for suggestion...i fixed the tele photo - I angled cropped it the best I can without me cutting the telescope...



also, i forgot to post this one on too:



...enjoy...

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who needs friends when you have a Rebel?

La Familia: Canon REBEL Xsi * EF-S IS 18-55 * Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG * Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM * Canon 580EX II Speedlite E-TTL II * HOLGA 120CFN Medium Format Viewfinder * Velbon - El Carmagne 530
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what kind of software are u using i really like your style of edit

Thanks Post, I used Lightroom and Photoshop .

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who needs friends when you have a Rebel?

La Familia: Canon REBEL Xsi * EF-S IS 18-55 * Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG * Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM * Canon 580EX II Speedlite E-TTL II * HOLGA 120CFN Medium Format Viewfinder * Velbon - El Carmagne 530
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I edited this to center the Dock:

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who needs friends when you have a Rebel?

La Familia: Canon REBEL Xsi * EF-S IS 18-55 * Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG * Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM * Canon 580EX II Speedlite E-TTL II * HOLGA 120CFN Medium Format Viewfinder * Velbon - El Carmagne 530
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