Interesting thread and fascinating to read all the comments. I've been asked to give a talk on some of my recent photography work at a camera club near me which came right out of the blue. In preparation for this, I've been going through my entire digital photography collection and I've astounded myself at what utter dross I've taken over the years that at the time, I thought was good! I think back to the time when I thought vignettes looked good on
everything.....
I think that no matter what the picture is of, you always need the basics - composition, focus and correct exposure. What I want to try and achieve is a shot - or a careful edit - of a shot that nobody else will have. I've given several examples of this in my talk with different edits or crops of one main image. When I process images in lightroom, it's easy to get carried away on a particular shot - if I see potential I'll tend to create several copies and experiment with tone, desaturation, clarity, split toning, cropping etc. From one image I might end up with 3 or 4 if it's good enough. However, I won't always bung the whole lot on Flickr or Facebook - maybe just the one that has most impact. If I'm at an event like a nightshoot or photocall rather than an airshow, then I'll treat it differently and try and experiment a bit more to get a more unusual shot rather than a record shot of an aircraft. Things like getting low down, a bit of grass in the foreground, low aperture etc.
Desaturation can sometimes have a dramatic effect on an image, much more so than in full colour - but it has to be done right - there's more to it than putting the slider to 0! I used to work with someone takes photos of steam trains but thinks that this is all it takes to make a BW image - they turn out to be pictures containing several shades of light to mid grey with no contrast, clarity or depth. On the other end of the spectrum, I've seen images on Facebook from people who are doing the 7-day BW challenge that appears to be doing the rounds at the moment and some of them are as black as Newgate's knocker!
Sometimes you just know it's creating the right impact. I was quite surprised and pretty astonished that my image of the Phantom at the Navy Wings shoot (below) was viewed almost 13,000 times with 150-odd retweets and 40-odd likes (did I go viral?!). I'm not normally a fan of the wonky angles but it just seemed to come together with the lighting and slight desaturation. When I compare it to the full colour version without wonkiness, it beats it a mile down.
Phabulous by
Ian Garfield, on Flickr
I never used to like cropping on an angle but on the right picture, it can have such an effect and alter the image completely. What I absolutely abhor is overprocessing - whether it's oversaturation or halos from adjusting the shadows or highlights too much. I remember seeing an image of an F15 through Cad West earlier in the year with a well over-saturated background of sunset-coloured clouds. It was hideous yet many loved it!!
Where do we stand on things like prop blur, out of interest? Is it one of the golden rules of aviation photography?!