CLOSED: POLL: CCCL Competition: Week 47 - Tie

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Taming of the Spa

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Nato_777

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Further explanation of the theme, as described by Primus Ortus:

"We know of the ZR1's reputation at Nurburgring, yet can it fare so well in Belgium, at
Spa- Francorchamps? I believe the ZR1 is much better suited for Spa, with its sweeping turns
and wide open straights. What the 'Ring is to hotlaps, Spa is to racing. Have fun!"


CAR: Corvette ZR1 (C6) '09 (No RM, but modifications, such as aero parts, are perfectly fine.)
LOCATION: Spa Francorchamps


gtp_cccl_rules_01-2.jpg


Please, ensure you read and understand all requirements for this competition. Failure to follow
the rules may result in disqualification. If you have any questions, please, send me a Private Message.

This Thread has everything you need to know.

  • Be reminded that only the Judge's favourite 15 entries will get through to each poll.
  • Do not vote on your entry.
  • Do not try to sway the poll.
  • In the event of a tie, a 24 hour poll is created.
  • In the event of a second tie, Judge's vote is the deciding factor.
  • Please, view each image in it's full size, before voting.

 
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Please don't tell me that i failed because of the contrast on this one:

6803519625_98cb2d15b1.jpg


Can anyone give me an opinion or advice? Thanks
 
Say Primus, your thoughts on this interior shot...



...would this exterior image have gained a more favourable judgement?

 
Oh not again !!

6796939551_f9935a5c3a.jpg


Feedback

It's not so much the composition as Musical Artist indicated, as much as it was the overexposure on this one. You could have moved the camera over to the right about 25 meters with the perspective on the driver's side rear-end in the lower right quadrant of the frame, and that would have given you more road to draw the eye away, giving a better sense of depth. It may even have helped with exposure, because the sun would not have been glaring into the lens. The Rule of Thirds is a good heuristic, but still discretionary, as long as there is a purpose behind the composition. Rigid adherence to such rules should not outweigh artistic license. In this case, I felt the bleached out sky dominated the shot, notwithstanding the composition. Spa is a very difficult track to get a good unedited shot on because of the position of the light source (the sun). I can see that you had to amp the exposure up in order to bring out the detail of this side of the Vette, but it was done at the expense of the totality of the shot. On the flip-side, your shot has great sense of motion and the spray from the tyres is nice. I also liked how you placed the rumble strip along the path of the car, which accentuates the lines of the car and the sense of speed.

Please don't tell me that i failed because of the contrast on this one:

6803519625_98cb2d15b1.jpg


Can anyone give me an opinion or advice? Thanks

I won't tell you that. :) In fact, this one made it into the top 25. With this great angle and curve of the road, though, I would have liked this shot to adhere a little more strictly to the rule of thirds. If you had placed the Vette in the lower right quadrant and tilted the camera up or down and to the right a little, while looking down a little more on the subject car, it may have made the picture more interesting. It would have brought out the curve of the road more and the shot may have been more compelling. Additionally, I felt the photo was a little too sharp, as indicated by the telling marks along the seams along the hood. With the black and white shots, smooth gradient progression along the blacks and grays is necessary for a great shot. The hood in this shot has some issues with this, as the grays break up a little bit (quasi color banding/posterization). Nevertheless, I really liked the sense of motion from left to lower right and the lighting on the top of the car is great.

Some feedback please Primus?


Nice shot my friend. I liked the color and depth of field. The Vette sure does have big hips doesn't she? :) In this photo, the fish-eye view and close-up of the rear seemed to dominate the shot more than the great depth of the road. I liked the sense of motion as well, but it looks like you were going for two different focal points, which tended to cause confusion instead of harmony in the shot. If you're going for the great aperture/DOF, it may have been better to back up the shot a little and go for a slightly smaller aft end. If the Vette was the primary perspective, then I would have liked the car a little more in the upper right-hand quadrant with the camera up a little, tilted to the right a little and panned down a little. It's hard to describe and easier to show. In other words, I would have tilted the camera differently and backed the camera up a little to decrease the fish-eye, provide a similar but more harmonic focus on the car, while keeping the long road and great depth of field. Sorry I can't explain it better. :indiff:

feedback?


Beautiful shot GT-johan - this one made it into the top 20. The composition is nice, the tones are decent, the aperture is good... right about now you are thinking, yeah, so why didn't it make the poll? There were some issues with the greys in the rear with banding, which were more significantly manifest when the picture was enlarged, but even that probably wasn't the biggest issue. In the end, I think it was that there were quite a few desaturated photos in this competition, and although the picture was technically sound, it did not stand out stylistically. Maybe it was a case of knowing your medium, so to speak. We have one of the greatest racing tracks in the world with one of the greatest sports cars in the world. I didn't get the sense that either the track or the power of the Vette was being displayed, even though the car and the blurred out track were nice individually. A photo should tell a story, but this one just needed a little more character I think. This isn't to say that the photo has to show the power of the Vette or the grandeur of Spa's glorious bends and straights, it's just that if these attributes are left out, the remainder must stand out even more.

Say Primus, your thoughts on this interior shot...



...would this exterior image have gained a more favourable judgement?


Well, you definitely went outside of the box and took a chance on this one my friend. I liked the idea. Much like the critique I gave above for GT_johan, though, I think your photo missed the point of the car/track pairing. I didn't get a good sense of story in this shot. I see the nice curves in Eau Rouge, but the inside of the ZR1 isn't interesting, even in the real deal. This perspective merely amplified the poor rendering of the interior. Perhaps a different aperture would have helped fade out the end of the road a little. I wouldn't have gone as far as 1.0, but maybe a 1.4 or 2.0, depending on how far back behind the Vette your camera was. Nice try though! :)

Your other shot was also decent, but the tree trunks and house in the distance were poorly rendered by PD, which obviously decreased the realism of the shot.

feedback please

CCCL Week 47 by f1_stig, on Flickr

I really expected to see more of Eau Rouge in this competition. It is legendary. In this shot, I like how you utilized a vertical composition, but felt that the color was a little desaturated and you may have fared better with a different shutter speed. Had you used a 1/60, for example, the wheels would have been spinning and there would have been a greater sense of motion in the road. Also, with a long perspective like this, you may have benefited from a different/wider aperture, such as 1, 1.4, 2.0, etc. This would have isolated the front of the Vette more while blurring the back ground to your taste in order to provide a more interesting shot. The lighting in this shot is also a little dim. Lastly, you clipped part of the road out of the left side of the shot, which is a little distracting. It was a nice try, and I think you were on the right track. Just a few adjustments and the picture would have a lot of potential.
 
It's not so much the composition as Musical Artist indicated, as much as it was the overexposure on this one. You could have moved the camera over to the right about 25 meters with the perspective on the driver's side rear-end in the lower right quadrant of the frame, and that would have given you more road to draw the eye away, giving a better sense of depth. It may even have helped with exposure, because the sun would not have been glaring into the lens. The Rule of Thirds is a good heuristic, but still discretionary, as long as there is a purpose behind the composition. Rigid adherence to such rules should not outweigh artistic license. In this case, I felt the bleached out sky dominated the shot, notwithstanding the composition. Spa is a very difficult track to get a good unedited shot on because of the position of the light source (the sun). I can see that you had to amp the exposure up in order to bring out the detail of this side of the Vette, but it was done at the expense of the totality of the shot. On the flip-side, your shot has great sense of motion and the spray from the tyres is nice. I also liked how you placed the rumble strip along the path of the car, which accentuates the lines of the car and the sense of speed.

That is kinda saying balance of the composition in a more complex way. The filter and exposure basically aren't parts of the balance, but, rule of thirds is pretty much a guideline to help get better balanced photos.
I am an art student a university, and I've gotten the lecture about balancing compositions about 6 or 7 times now.
 
Agreed, and I wasn't saying that the filter and exposure were parts of the balance. Nevertheless, I'm not really here to debate the finer points of it with you MA.
 
I won't tell you that. :) In fact, this one made it into the top 25. With this great angle and curve of the road, though, I would have liked this shot to adhere a little more strictly to the rule of thirds. If you had placed the Vette in the lower right quadrant and tilted the camera up or down and to the right a little, while looking down a little more on the subject car, it may have made the picture more interesting. It would have brought out the curve of the road more and the shot may have been more compelling. Additionally, I felt the photo was a little too sharp, as indicated by the telling marks along the seams along the hood. With the black and white shots, smooth gradient progression along the blacks and grays is necessary for a great shot. The hood in this shot has some issues with this, as the grays break up a little bit (quasi color banding/posterization). Nevertheless, I really liked the sense of motion from left to lower right and the lighting on the top of the car is great.
Thanks for all the info mate :)
 
Thank you Primus for the feedback! :)
I understand what you're getting at and will definitely keep those points in mind come the next comp!
 
Feedback will be appreciated :)


thetaming by mazda787, on Flickr

Nice shot mazda787 - I liked the clarity of the car, the shading on the profile, and the tones of the shot generally. This one would have benefited from adherence to the rule of thirds, though. Also, I felt the smoke was too bright/overexposed, which tended to dominate the photo. Maybe if the car was in the upper right quadrant pointing down to the lower left, it would have drawn the eye up the road and towards the car, giving it a greater sense of motion on this great bend in the road.



Any feedback on mine Primus?​

Well Ferrari, I loved the color, tones, lighting and use of aperture on your photo. :) I see that you got the curve of the road in the frame as well, which is nice. But, you cut out the long straight at the same time, which would have added more depth to the shot. Perhaps if the camera was to the right a little and panned back towards the car on the left, you would have been able to include more of the stretch. Rule of thirds on this one as well. Other than that, though, and it's a toss up. If there were 16 slots in the poll, yours would have made it, and no doubt, garnered votes.

Judge, some feedback please ????



Good photo Khalid. In the end, I think yours suffered from the fact that there were a lot of rear-end shots, including black and white ones, which made it extremely difficult to stand out from the crowd. I liked the sense of motion, the composition on this partial shot was good, and the blacks/grays are good as well. Nice contrast in the rear brake lights and the aperture is well chosen. Light balance in the sky was a bit overexposed, which cut into the roof and bleached out the sky, but I see that it was probably necessary in order to get an adequate amount of light onto the left. That was the problem with this photo shoot for everyone - the light source is inadequate in most cases to take a great shot without editing. Perhaps if this photo was taken on another portion of the track, which would have taken greater advantage of the light source, this picture would have excelled where other aft-end shots did not.


I liked the tones, clarity of the car, and lighting in this photo rikin. Nice job. The symmetrical lines of the rumble strip and stripe along the opposite side, in conjunction with the car, are also pleasing to the eye. In the end, though, it felt as though the focal length and aperture could have been different. The photo could have been more interesting if perhaps the subject was offset from the center. I know, though, that in order to get the right lighting with the warm filter, you have to keep the car in the center, otherwise, the vignetting hurts the lighting. As a result, the warm filter is difficult to use. This photo has good balance, but the composition was a bit off.

Its great to see a judge give such great insight on why a photo didn't make a cut, I know its very difficult to decide and you will never make everybody happy. hoping you could shed a bit of light on mine, I would sure appreciate it.

Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps_1 by reverand33, on Flickr

Beautiful photo rev - I really liked the contrast in the clouds and balance between the road, sky, and trees, which help split up the two light and dark mediums. I also liked the texture in the road. I got the sense though, that the car was supposed to be moving because of the nice sweeping curve in the road and the direction of the shot. Unfortunately, increasing the shutter speed in order to get the good road texture sacrifices wheel spin and movement. As you know I'm sure, decreasing shutting speed to 1/125 or even 1/250 would have given you varying degrees of wheel spin and road movement.

Also, I liked the idea of the shot, with the contrasting shades of black, white and gray, but it feels like you stopped short of the photo's true potential by going for a middle ground. I would liked to have seen a little more contrast, so that the back of the car was darker and the lighting on the side of the car was a little brighter (but not too bright - I wouldn't want to bleach away all the great shades). The sun on the upper right shining down on the car feels like it should have made a greater impact on the car - almost like the finger of God touching the Vette, if you get what I mean. Given all that, I understand that it might not have been possible as an unedited shot. It is possible that you could have taken the camera over to the right and up a little more and panned back to the left and down in order to get a slightly larger profile of the car, with the sun to the back a little. Then you could have increased the exposure a tad bit without overexposing the sky.

Lastly, partial shots of a car are difficult to pull off. I would liked to have seen a different camera tilt/angle with this partial. Perhaps if you placed the car down in the lower left quadrant a little (rule of thirds) with the front of the car pointing to the upper right, it would have helped make the photo a little more composed/balanced. In all though, it is a pleasing photo to look at, and one that was not cut from the poll until after my 4th run through...



Vette by NT1138, on Flickr

Any ideas Primus? 👍

Good shot nt1138 - I just felt the car was a little out of focus and the building in the back hurt the otherwise good composition and distracted from the overall feel. I liked the color as well. Perhaps a different aperture would have spiced the photo up a little bit by focusing in on the car more.
 
Good shot nt1138 - I just felt the car was a little out of focus and the building in the back hurt the otherwise good composition and distracted from the overall feel. I liked the color as well. Perhaps a different aperture would have spiced the photo up a little bit by focusing in on the car more.

Now you say it, it does look like it's got a hat on :indiff: Thank you for your comment, must try harder 👍
 
Good photo Khalid. In the end, I think yours suffered from the fact that there were a lot of rear-end shots, including black and white ones, which made it extremely difficult to stand out from the crowd. I liked the sense of motion, the composition on this partial shot was good, and the blacks/grays are good as well. Nice contrast in the rear brake lights and the aperture is well chosen. Light balance in the sky was a bit overexposed, which cut into the roof and bleached out the sky, but I see that it was probably necessary in order to get an adequate amount of light onto the left. That was the problem with this photo shoot for everyone - the light source is inadequate in most cases to take a great shot without editing. Perhaps if this photo was taken on another portion of the track, which would have taken greater advantage of the light source, this picture would have excelled where other aft-end shots did not.

Thanks alot for the feedback, I really admired your criticism.

I'll do better next time, Thanks again :)
 
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