Photographer’s Notes I shot a lot of garbage pictures earlier today. Later I was chatting with some cute girls who asked what I’d been shooting – and I made the mistake of answering truthfully, “Garbage,” I said. They drifted away shaking their heads over me.
I had prepped another image of an old car with a soggy wet book on a dirty hood, moss growing under and around the wipers. It was dreary, sad, depressing. I showed it to my wife and she said without sugar coating, “I don’t like it.” Wives can be like that. I answered, “Neither do I, so why am I entering it?” Her silence confirmed consent … so I’m switching it out.
Sorry Long Shots. Hope this doesn’t mess up our ‘run for the roses.’ But I’m too old to do sad, dreary and depressing photography.
For the record, this is a dumpster in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. It’s a lively, gritty, eclectic, little bit dangerous area near where I work. It feels to me like some of the more interesting places in New York City. And even in this dumpster I’m reminded that Seattle is a clean, safe, attractive city with … apparently … some of the cleanest garbage anywhere. Here’s photographic proof.
Post Processing • Convert from RAW (PSCS5 Camera Raw)
• Vibrance (PSCS5 Vibrance Layer)
• Brighten (PSCS5 Curves Layer)
• Crop (PSCS5)
• Resize (Perfect Resize)
• Sharpen (PSCS5 USM)
• Save for Web (PSCS5)
First impression: I didn't envy those who chose to enter this challenge! It truly takes guts and then some to try and make a subject with an intrinsic 'Eww' factor, appealing. I gave a 7 during voting.
Artistic: Nice poppy colours help to lessen the basic yuck factor. Looks like two coffee cups from the same place, a jacked-up power drink and can't quite tell what the last one is on the left. But seems to point towards a really souped-up society with no place to go.
Technical: Good sense of flow and leading lines with the straws and angles of the dumpster edges. Ambient light looks fine, and don't think we really need to see what's lurking in that back left corner now, do we? Minor nitpick is the straw on the right, it looks almost fake, but again maybe that's a reflection on society *picking lint from bellybutton*
Overall: For this challenge, a relatively easy shot to look at. The low score is I feel less indicative of your ability and just more an objection to the up-close-and-personal nature of this shot. Doesn't make it bad by any means, but doesn't make any effort to appear sanitized enough to appeal to the voters.
Well Doc.. neither of us really liked the garbage.. The way I suppose we should look at our results I believe is to say that we are two cleanest members in the team..Me being the cleanest since I never even touched the garbage..lol
Lovely work never the less. ( I hate saying that about garbage)
Somehow I missed this one during my first run-through of the contest entries. Nice capture. Lots of color, nice POV, proper DOF, not too unappealing (which is saying something with garbage as the subject).
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