Author Topic: Results and Feedback for the "Local Life" Weekly Photography Assignment  (Read 1293 times)

keithsnell

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Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Local Life" Assignment.  The guidelines for this assignment were to compose a scene that conveyed an aspect of life in your local community and gave viewers a "feel" for what life in your community is like.  There were some great images submitted for this assignment, and I enjoyed learning a little bit more about everyone's local community.

What struck me most about this assignment was how much the subtle cues provided by posture and body positions of the people in the images contributed to the overall effectiveness of the image.  These cues helped convey the emotions that were present when the photographer composed the image, and set the overall tone of the image. 

Becky Jenner alluded to this in the title of her Watchful Eyes image.  As we can see in the image below, the relaxed posture of the two individuals in front of the fire indicates that the situation is under control, nevertheless they are very attentive and ready to respond if needed.  Although the viewer might not be able to verbalize this "understanding" of the image context, these non-verbal cues are present in the image and contribute to the overall effect on a subconscious level.


Watchful Eyes
by Becky Jenner

The same is true of Lars' Local Shops image, where the posture of the individuals walking in the scene indicates they are walking at a brisk pace.  This, and the angle and quality of light and other "cues" set the stage for the viewer to interpret this image as an early morning scene on a cool morning, before the shops have opened for the day.


Local Shops
by Lars

The relaxed, comfortable posture of the men in the Talkin Cattle image conveys that these two men are old friends, comfortable in each other's company and sharing idle conversation.  The men "hung out" together at the cattle pen for quite some time, and I took a series of images during their conversation, but none of the other images quite conveyed their easy camaraderie as well as this one.


Talkin Cattle
by Keith

Congratulations to Rick (trvlrick) whose Rock Climbing image won the vote for People's Choice and was awarded Editor's Choice for Technical Merit.  There were several things that I liked about the image.  Rick very effectively used a strong diagonal in his image to emphasize the dynamic nature of this sport.  His placement of the climber at a strong point in the image (intersection of thirds) and capturing the climber poised for their next move also emphasized the physical nature of this sport.  I like that he caught the climber looking up, towards their objective.  You can almost feel the upward motion of this climber and get a sense of their determination.


Rock Climbing
by Rick (trvlrick)

I did feel that Rick's image was perhaps a bit "flat," and checked to see what color space he had used.  Sure enough, the image was posted in adobeRGB color space, which doesn't display well in a non "color managed" application like Internet Explorer.  I pulled the image into Photoshop to change the color space to sRGB, and while I had the image in Photoshop I opened up the shadows a bit with the shadows and highlights tool and added just a bit of sharpening. 


Rock Climbing (sRGB)

Thanks again to everyone that participated in the "Local Life" assignment.  I enjoyed viewing images of your local area, and learning a little bit more about what life is like in your corner of the world. 

Keith
« Last Edit: March 31, 2009, 01:54:49 PM by keithsnell »