[grainbelt]

A very close-up image of a spool holding the cables for a lifeboat on a car ferry.

[Sparkle]

That, IMO, is excellent artistry.

[Miguel]

Hmmm. First technically, this doesn't seem as sharp as it should, especially on the right side of the frame. Perhaps the boat's vibrations ran up through your body. I've been riding ferries almost daily for 22 years and it's something I try to be mindful of in my positioning and shutter speed settings. Or the spool's convex shape is showing.

The color cast also seems a bit on the blue side. And under-saturated. Overall the tone seems too flat--I'd like to see more texture and depth to the image. So it's not very engaging. Maybe there are too many rusted metal objects in my life and my perspective is way skewed (I mean that).

The more I look at this, the more I feel that conventional color is not the best rendering option.

Consider a high contrast black and white approach. If you want color, play around with some post processing styles. Something out of the Dragan toolkit may be fun.

M

[Sparkle]

Colour is what colour is.

[Ash]

Good one for the thematic "rust" thread.
But this one is difficult to critique.
It has limited interest.
It is indeed dull and lacking adequate contrast and thus 'pop'.
What attracted you to take a photo of this scene?
To me, it would be the textures and colours - and for those reasons, you would want to bring these elements out as much as possible in your image, capturing it and processing it with this in mind.

[grainbelt]

What attracted you to take a photo of this scene?
To me, it would be the textures and colours - and for those reasons, you would want to bring these elements out as much as possible in your image, capturing it and processing it with this in mind.

Stuck on a car ferry in Lake Michigan, I took pictures of everything. The above shot was from the lower right of this:



It was an overcast evening, the light was a little flat. I did a little work with curves, but I'm not one to embellish much - what you see is what it was.

I attribute the corners being a bit soft to the shape of the drum pulling them out of focus. I played with a few different compositions but this proportion of blue and brown made sense in my head.

In hindsight, shooting at an angle rather than straight on would have brought more texture to it, but also limited depth of field given the available light I was working with. I kept the sharpening to a minimum, it looks better to my eye at a much higher resolution.

Thank you all for the comments. This is one of those where being there, it means more to me than it does out of context. I need to find a way to add context to these somewhat abstract compositions.

[Sparkle]

The colour is the context. Does not matter how sharp, how much texture. Abstract art is what it is. There is no explaining it. Nothing to which it can be compared. It is strictly personal, both to the photographer and the viewer. I would bet it would grace many a wall.

[smf]

I like the first photo as presented, and I would welcome the opportunity to see your future work.

[jbinpg]

If there was that much rust on the cable spool, I would be finding a bridge...