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Down at Town Hall. Got a bit nasty with me running for cover and protecting the camera

Hope you like. These were taken with two things in mind as part of my next assignment.

1) Shoot an event or place that has alot of people.
2) Take photographs that explore the effects of motion blur









More on my Flikr link here

any criticism, help? tips? thoughts?

The shots are good, but I'm not a big fan of the selective colouring.

For your 'essay' I'd recommend you get some shots with posters/etc to help paint an initial picture of what the protest is about. The one in your flickr portfolio called 'Man' would be an example. Usually this will start to get emotions stirred whilst people look through the rest of the images.

Personally I would get right in the thick of it to really capture the mood. I would be on the other side of the horses where all of the raw emotion is. Don't be too worried about your gear, that's what insurance is for.

cheers

I love 3 & 4 how you have used selective colour.
how did you get them done so quickly! it would take me hours to do that.

hope your equipment didnt get too damaged.
nice gallery too

I get the feeling you're showing a few unconnected photos rather than a photo essay about the event. Which is not necessarily a criticism, just an observation.

Selective colour doesn't rescue a shot, but it can give extra oomph. So if you're looking at a shot going "I like what it shows, but the composition is wrong", selective colour will rarely help you. So the Police hat... no idea what the shot is saying.

The last shot is better, but it doesn't really show any sense of purpose in the group - it's just a bunch of people standing around behind some horses. It might work better cropped and straightened to show the poster guy and two horses in portrait orientation.

I would either have gone for portraits of people at the protest, or an essay about the event. Also, with 12MP to play with you want to be zoomed out a lot more and cropping in post. When you're not looking through the viewfinder you really need to be capturing more than you need so you're not (eg) chopping someone's forehead off. That way tight crops are a choice not an unhappy side effect.

Just to show I'm not talking out my Cheney, here's some links to my shots. I tend to got for shots like Dave at RTS or Josh .Story/headline shots should ideally summarise everything in one shot, like No WTO or ANZ Kills or the inevitable banner at the front of the march. The banner shot is necessary for the essay or headline and also where the UWA comes in handy - if you have a 16mm or wider lens you can get right up close and not shoot the people standing in front of the banner.

Thanks for the tips. The assignment basically said 'shoot with motion' , use auto, take camera phone pics, dont worry about focus, horizons and break rules and ive worked that into the theme of a gig, event with people or similar.

Selective coloring I used to bring something out, as I found stuff around disttracting. I'm not really sure how to crop with the magnify, when i crop I just cut out stuff - how can I zoom in at the same time using PS? I know this sounds SO silly and simple but I dont know how

Ill look through my raw shots and see if I can get a few more that tell a story, rather than unconnected like you mentioned. Ill do this tonight - gotta hand work in tomorrow.

I liked the last shot because all the action was in the center, which is clear but then theres this loner in a big space trying to attract attention but no one is listening...

Thanks for the tips, ill def look for some more shots to connect them together. Any tips on the zoom/croping would be great

Laurie wrote:I love 3 & 4 how you have used selective colour.
how did you get them done so quickly! it would take me hours to do that.

hope your equipment didnt get too damaged.
nice gallery too

equip is all fine

Umm I just copied them over into Adobe Raw, deleted the crap ones, kept the decent ones, selected my favourite and worked on em. Took a while I guess but thats mostly due to my CF card reader crapping itself leaving me with a backup over USB1 (DOG SLOW!)

Hi Guys

Ive added some NEW images to Flikr as part of the War Protest and changed a few. I hope these now tell a better story

Please post your thoughts (gently! )