I recently went to Eastern Oregon to photograph the Shaniko ghost town in snow and frost. It was a wonderful time and I came back with several images, I’m quite happy with. Here’s one of a closeup of the antique fire truck front wheel and fender. Kinda fun. I’ll post a few more over the next few days.
Any comments appreciated.
85mm, 1/160 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 125, handheld.
David, a really nice job with the B&W treatment. It has a nice crisp look to it… 
Hi David,
I’ve been looking forward to seeing more from your visit to this ghost town. 
Really neat old fire truck and the B&W treatment is fitting and pleasing to look at.
I really like the detail in the frost stuck to the fender, wheel and tire.
I would consider going in closer on just the fender, wheel and tire though, mainly to bring the viewers attention to just those elements and details.
The wider crop you have here shows part of the front grill and the headlight and that leaves the viewer wanting to wander away from the main focal point (which is the fender, wheel and tire in my opinion).
The old ghost town has a story to tell and in my opinion the best way to tell it is to show a shot of the town first, then a shot of the where the truck is located in town, followed by a photo of the truck in its entirety next to the old building (which I’ve already seen, Edit: Sorry, I just noticed that it’s not the same truck that’s in Cold #3), then show tight shots of the most interesting parts of the truck, it’s a photojournalists method for story telling with photographs.
I done some photojournalist work for the town we live in, mostly the old historic sites and parks and the people I worked for seemed to like the way I presented it.
Anyway, it’s just my 2 cents worth that probably isn’t worth 2 cents.
In the cropped example below, I done the crop first, then I removed the clear ice from the fender and replaced it with some frost to match other parts of the fender (mostly with the cloning stamp, no content aware fill, some things are better done the old fashioned way), then I added some snow to the top left corner so it would follow the curve of the fender and blended it in (just to add some continuity to the ground snow).
Note: I didn’t spend much time on this example because it is just an example
I really like the perspective, the low angle that this was shot from was perfect IMHO because it shows the underside of the truck just right
I figured I would do the crop and edit example because it’s much easier than trying to explain it with words, sometimes I don’t do well with words.
And, this is a critique site, right?
Just for the record, I will only critique things that I have experience with.
What a great combination, abandoned cars and snow/frost! This is a really nice detail with great B&W rendering. Looking forward to more images from this site.
@Merv and @Ola_Jovall thank you for the kind comments.
Merv, that is a really good crop/comp you came up with. I think I’ll use it. Thanks.
Also, I will look through my Shaniko images with the idea of posting a journalism like set of images in the next post from there.
Thanks again,
David
