Monday, February 23, 2009

Julie (44/100) - Mucking out stables


Keith was most generous with his time. I just wandered down the hill from stable to stable as he continued on with his job: he works part-time usually starting early in the morning to get around his 60 horses.

I have all styles of portraits of Keith - my favourite is the second small one with his head stuck over the stable door. This was a good exercise as I knew I would have to alter settings, so chose Portrait for when he went inside a stall to get the flash to fire automatically, yet changed back to P (cloudy and 800)for the outside shots. I had to adjust the light extensively in Picasa and also did a fair bit of cropping. The flash images have no subtlety at all - so I now have two iced-coffee empties on the sink which I will work on with the Stanley knife when I have finished the washing and ironing.



Giving the eye somewhere to go:


Peter's version:
Gosh it's easy when it's not my shot!

5 comments:

bitingmidge said...

I think you made the right choice once again.

There's something about this pic that doesn't sit right with me and it's taken a few re visits to work it out.

I think it's that it's not quite plumb. The walls are tilted, but not enough to look deliberate. (Remember I am a bit "thingy" about that sort of thing - not obsessive compulsive, but thingy none the less!)

In the "what if" category, I think if the hose had been turned on, the rhythm in the shot would have been spectacular. One's eye would have been drawn from water around the loop in the hose up the (right arm) to his face.

Is it just me, or is anyone else's eye drawn every time to the end of the hose? Curious.

four and a half stars! (out of five)

bitingmidge said...

I still can't place why, maybe it's that the floor is the largest area of one tone?

Anyway, here's my version, sorry about the "water", I'll look up how to do it better next time!

Ann said...

I like the one you chose as well. Now Peter, that's not fair, by all means take out things already there but you don't add things in that aren't actually there. My eye is drawn to his face and to the hose, presumably because the hose is a diagonal drawing your eye across. Actually, without the water my eye is drawn around and back to his body, with the water my eye is drawn out of the picture.

Julie said...

If the water were coming out of the hose at that rate, image the mess it would be making on the floor of the stable with all that manure and straw! He was actually just putting it away when I bounded up to him to ask.

The entire row of stables are very rickety and require each other to remain upright.

Wish I could use photo-editing like you can ... wait until I retire!!!

Joan Elizabeth said...

Before I read the comments I had a devil of a time 'spotting the difference'.