Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Hyatt Atrium

Last night was Honors Program Night at the Bay Area Photo Club for September 2009. The assignment this time was "Unusual Perspective". One of my two entries was "Hyatt Atrium", an HDR taken from the top of the atrium at the Hyatt in San Antonio a couple of weeks ago. I really like the composition and colors in the photo and feel the applicability to the assignment ("Unusual Perspective") is very strong so I had high hopes for the image. It received a "no award" from our panel of judges though leading me to conclude that my opinion of my own work may not be completely unbiased? :-)

Title: "Hyatt Atrium"


Post-processing: High Dynamic Range (HDR) composite from three hand-held exposures (-2, 0, +2) using Photomatix Pro > Photoshop CS3 > Topaz Adjust plug-in

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, it's a winner in my book! Great photo! MIL

Jan Klier said...

Haha - I've had a similar week. Shooting something I thought went pretty well, but then the photos didn't really rock me during edit, and the feedback from the agent has been not what I hoped for :-)

It's not always predictable, all you can do is pick up the pieces and try again. Give yourself credit for the practice run :-)

On your photo: I do like the perspective, and that the building goes on the diagonal. The HDR effect works well. One thing that could be better - the photo lacks a bit of a visual center. With all the leading lines, they don't lead the eye. The closest you came was the pool in the center, but it doesn't really grab.

So you could go two different directions: get closer in and make sure that people are visible. That way you can tell a story about the people as seen from above. Or you could go even wider angle so that you can see more of the pipe effect of the building, which would solve the visual center problem. The fact that each of the walls has a different style doesn't help you. You could try a crop which only shows two walls, and just a hint of one of the opposite ones, so you know it's there, but it doesn't look so different.

Anyway, that's what comes to mind for me. Did the judges have any more specific feedback?

Jan

Larry said...

My comment was going to be: Nice shot with great colors and details - GOLD. But I like Jan's comments so now I guess I'll just shut my pie hole! :)

Barry Armer said...

Thanks MIL and Jan!

Jan - Feedback from the judges was all positive as I remember it. When the feedback is all good and the photo doesn’t score well I take it to mean that while the judges don't have any specific ideas about how to make the photo better it just didn't do anything for them. My concern going in was that the photo may have had too much going on for the judges to be able to immediately appreciate (it sometimes seems to me that simpler subjects do better that complex subjects in our Honors Night format) so I had shown the photo to a pier group at Houston Center for Photography beforehand. The feedback there was good as well and everyone assured me that my concern about complexity was unfounded. Judging is a subjective business and I try not to go crazy when one of my photos doesn't do as well as I had expected; sometimes it works out the other way as well and a photo I was less confident in does better than I had hoped. Luckily we have an Honor's Night every month so I get a chance to try again in 30 days! :-)

Cheers!
Barry

Barry Armer said...

Thanks Larry!

It sounds like Jan talked you out of my GOLD? Curses, foiled again! :-)

Cheers!
Barry

Anonymous said...

I am not perplexed! Goooolllldddd!

Larry J. Patrick said...

Not a gold! Well, I understand why. A couple of the dots in the carpeting are not very sharp and I can see a slight hot spot near the swimming pool which totally attracts my eye.

Who knows why things score the way they do?

In my view, this photo has something that a lot of photos presented do not have: IMPACT! You look at it and go: WOW. You then start to study it. As you study it, you start to see the many details within it.

Good job. I like it, for what it's worth!

Barry Armer said...

Thanks Anon and Patrick!

I appreciate the encouragement!

Cheers!
Barry