Something about thinking "outside the box"

[ErezS]

Hi,

I decided to write this message after several answers (in other threads) they wrote that I should not say about the "thinking outside the box".

I want to bring a little sample about photo, (In my humble opinion this is an impressive and interesting photo), but according to the criteria in the site, (In my humble opinion, as I understanding the criteria) has no chance to be accepted into the database , but with little thinking "outside the box" (again, in my humble opinion), I believe that this photo make happy for some or even many of the site's participants.

Please note that I did not make anything to edit in the photo, I did only a cropping and downsize.
The resolution of the photo after the cropping it's still around 3000 pixels wide.

I would love to read some reviews / comments / replies / and recommendations about this matter.

Thanks to all in advance, Have a nice day.

Erez.

PS
If there is anyone among members of the screening team who thinks that he thought this picture should be on the database, and is willing to help me with the editing of this image, please kindly send me a message with his private e-mail address.
Unfortunately, with honesty, I really do not know how to deal with this photo to makes satisfaction for everyone.

PS 2...
I apologize in advance if someone thinks that it's not an important issue and I wasting his time.

[Alex - Spot-This !]

Erezs,
it's clearly an interesting motive and it's has been done many times before. Just have a look at the shots from MAKS or Axalp.

[photoid=7190965]

[photoid=6074695]

[photoid=7296580]

[photoid=6976680]

So yeah the angle and the motive are okay. Now your pics has 2 problems. First the plane is really small and those flares are not that spectacular. But what completely kills the shot is the backlit issue. Unfortunately there's really nothing you can do about that so I guess that's one for the personal collection

Alex

[ErezS]

Erezs,
it's clearly an interesting motive and it's has been done many times before. Just have a look at the shots from MAKS or Axalp.
So yeah the angle and the motive are okay. Now your pics has 2 problems. First the plane is really small and those flares are not that spectacular. But what completely kills the shot is the backlit issue. Unfortunately there's really nothing you can do about that so I guess that's one for the personal collection

Alex

Alex,
Thanks for your time and about the explanations and examples.

Erez.

[Simpleboy]

And we do think outside the box. We bend rules when we see fit, especially with regards to older rarer photos, but compositions and fun exposure effects as well.

Photos that don't fit the composition rules include examples such as

[photoid=7405804]
[photoid=7403297]
[photoid=7382990]

Photo's which break many of our rules but still work can be seen below
[photoid=7123025]
[photoid=6898579]

Now for one that would regularly be too far away,
[photoid=7416263]
In this photo, we had a remark to the screener that he had cropped it loose to show the scale of the smoke cause by local wildfires. I thought to myself 'Thats a valid reason to bend the rules a bit', and another screener agreed.

If when I am screening I get an unusual composition, or something too far away, or dark, if the photographer has left me a note saying
'I have left dark to emphasize XXXXX'
or 'I have left plane far away to show YYYYY'
or 'aircraft is not centered because of ZZZZZ'
I straight away think 'This guy has thought about his photo' And assuming his photo works and has no dust spots, is in focus etc, I put my weight (one vote of a required two) behind the photo.

[ErezS]

And we do think outside the box. We bend rules when we see fit, especially with regards to older rarer photos, but compositions and fun exposure effects as well.
...
If when I am screening I get an unusual composition, or something too far away, or dark, if the photographer has left me a note saying
'I have left dark to emphasize XXXXX'
or 'I have left plane far away to show YYYYY'
or 'aircraft is not centered because of ZZZZZ'
I straight away think 'This guy has thought about his photo' And assuming his photo works and has no dust spots, is in focus etc, I put my weight (one vote of a required two) behind the photo.

Thanks for your time and about the explanations and examples.

[Simpleboy]

Also, as an additional note,

If a photog has a remark saying anything like what I indicated above (composition, exposure, distance to subject), and I disagree or such and reject for that reason (composition, exposure, distance to subject), I will always leave a note to him explaining why I have voted reject. I may suggest an alternative crop or way of editing, but since he took the time to leave me a note, Ill take the time to leave him one. Cause we're the friendly way to fly.

[Alberto U.]

Speaking of artistic shots or bent rules, are black and white pictures stilll accepted for (preserved) classic airliners?

[Alex - Spot-This !]

Speaking of artistic shots or bent rules, are black and white pictures stilll accepted for (preserved) classic airliners?

yes they're accepted.

[Alberto U.]

yes they're accepted.

cheers Alex, thanks!

[Felipe Garcia]

Erez,

Take this as my response to you for this thread, the change in policy thread, and the rejection thread.

1. First, I do feel like the screeners do think outside the box sometimes, this is one of my photos that I think was accepted thanks to that:
[photoid=7226015]

And I have several photos that I think look great but they didn't make it because of the lighting or the photo size, here's some of them.

http://phxspotters.com/wp-content/gallery/aviation_nation_2011_fgr/ximg_0511_1024_78-484.jpg

http://phxspotters.com/wp-content/gallery/aviation_nation_2011_fgr/ximg_0503_1024_86-291.jpg

http://phxspotters.com/wp-content/gallery/aviation_nation_2011_fgr/ximg_0494_1024_86-0289.jpg

2. Unfortunately, a problem of many airshows (military and civilian) is that the lighting can be really bad, or for example, in the case of Nellis, the morning part of the show is usually pretty bad, then as you get close to the afternoon the light gets great for the Thunderbirds, and by the time the Thunderbirds are done, the crowds have moved away from the static displays and the sunset light is hitting them. Unfortunately, most of the aerial shows take place with terrible light. Not much you can do except talk to someone who has been at that particular show before and knows the best spots.

2A. (I'm numbering this 2A because I wrote it later and I'm too lazy to change the numbers) I used the 70-200L unstabilized for almost an entire year, with and without the 1.4x teleconverter, and it's great lens. Probably one of the sharpest affordable lenses, however, it does have some limitations, and one of them is the result of the focal length and the lack of stabilization. I think that if you have a full understanding of the limitations (and you can understand them in English or Hebrew, there's no excuse for that one) you can create some stunning photos. I have photos of the Thunderbirds that were shot with that lens accepted, but you have to be on top of things to make it work, you can try some interesting compositions if the conditions allow it, but it won't always happen. I don't know if you own one, but a 1.4x teleconverter does help for military performances, and it's not as expensive as a new lens.

3. Photography is subjective, and something you think is amazing I might think it's not, and viceversa, unfortunately, since the screeners are human, they're subject to that.

4. I think that your actions in the past have generated a negative attitude towards you, and even if you have a valid point, a lot of us will dismiss it because of how you have behaved in the past with complains, excessive appealing (or so we've heard), so even if you want to raise a valid point, the general feeling seems to be "Oh, it's Erez and his big disappointments again".

5. I had a large batch of rejections a couple of weeks ago, and I did question some of them (as you may find in the rejections thread), now, I did find the root of the problems and corrected it. But if you start posting messages saying that you can't see the problems and you don't understand the rejections, it doesn't help (go back to #4).

6. It sometimes feels like contributors who have been on the site for longer, or have a large number of pictures might be held to a higher standard, not necessarily a bad thing, and personally, I can tell you that that's how I feel as one of the admins and top contributors in our group's website and forum. I find it frustrating that when people ask for advice and I tell them how to do something, their reply is "well, but the way I've been doing it seems to work fine"; I find it more aggravating when someone who has been on the site for a while and has been helped a lot asks for advice but doesn't listen. It seems like you have been given advice plenty of times and you haven't listened properly. Also, it seems like if someone who is not a staff member gives you advice, you ignore it because of that reason.

7. You still blame the language barrier a lot, and James brought up a valid point. The language barrier exists, but at this point I don't feel like it's much of an issue, except when you don't understand. We all seem to understand what you write, but it feels like the opposite is not true. I will agree with you that it might be difficult to express certain feelings, or the way you say things sounds completely different in another language, or it sounds rude, but from a technical perspective, if you can still transmit your points to the audience and understand what the audience is trying to tell you, you've communicated successfully.

7A. Regardless of language, sometimes it seems like you dismiss advice if it's not what you wanted to hear, or, if it's not specifically what you asked. It could be the way you write it, I cannot deny that, but I do feel like you're dismissing advice that doesn't directly pertain to your question, or doesn't come from someone you're expecting.

8. I think that regardless of how many pictures you got accepted before there were "standards", you should have learned something in the past year or two, I can tell you I have, now, most of my uploads are from 2011-12, as I never did any serious spotting before that. I'm pretty sure that anyone who has given you advice feels like you should have learned something, it's not about becoming a professional or not, but about improving, if you don't improve, then you haven't learned.

9. Have you thought about starting your own website or Flickr or 500px account to upload the pictures that you like but the databases won't accept?

10. It doesn't feel good to have a photo rejected, especially when you think it's not a common one. I got pretty angry when I had some shots rejected over at RP of an ALCO Century because "we regularly don't accept cloudy day shots of common power". I don't understand how "ALCO Century" and "common power" can be part of the same sentences, but instead of accusing the screeners of ganging up against me I simply put that up on my Flickr account and my personal website.

11. I've received lots of feedback from the screeners before, and a lot of it can be blamed on someone with the mysterious signature "DH", so I will assume it's Dave. The comments are usually short, but they have given me advice on how to do something, or what to do with the picture. And I do try to leave comments to the screeners if needed (most of the times if I'm uploading a rejected picture I tell them what the rejection was and that it was corrected), sometimes they don't understand the conditions surrounding the shot, or why you made a decision. You might think outside the box to frame a picture because of a certain symbolism, or because it looks good, or maybe because you feel like it's worth the different perspective, but the screeners (and the public in general) might not understand the reasons behind it.

12. I went back to some of your previous shots, and I really like the ones you took with the 10-22, I've been using a 12-24 for a year now and you can get some great shots with it, and you can definitely think outside the box too. You should really experiment with that too, the results might not be as exciting as a plane with flames shooting out of the exhaust, but they might be very unique. You can create some great shots if you understand your limitations as a photographer and the limitations of your equipment, as I said before in point 2 or 3 or 4.

14. There's a great program called The Photographers Ephemeris, it's free for Mac & PC and you can use that to see how the light is going to be in a certain location at a certain time, you can use that to plan ahead and figure out a plan, as you might know how to get the perfect shot, and have the light ruin it. Like I said before, it happens, and sometimes you can't do anything about it, but you can take advantage of the light and shoot the static displays or from a different angle with different results.

14A. At the same time, you can still take photos and learn what you did right or wrong, and hopefully use that as a learning tool for an airshow where the conditions are better. Don't just take a picture for the database, but take something that you like and enjoy. If you think that you can get a great shot -minus the fact that it is backlit, and you think the result is great, just doesn't work for the database, then keep it in your collection, in the end, you're your own client, and client satisfaction is what matters.

15. This time I definitely took a lot of time to write this to avoid sounding like that last time, where I might have come across as a complete arse.

[hdgrubb]

I had one accepted several months ago that, I believe, would fall under this category

[ErezS]

Erez,

Take this as my response to you for this thread, the change in policy thread, and the rejection thread.
...
15. This time I definitely took a lot of time to write this to avoid sounding like that last time, where I might have come across as a complete arse.

Dear Felipe,
Wow!
That's what I thought in the first moment when I saw your answer.
Now I'm far away from my PC, and unfortunately [yes, the language barrier, it's the truth ! ] it will take me some time to translate and understand the things you wrote.
[and I see also that there are other answers in some other posts], so, firstly I answer here now in brief answer with BIG THANKS !
... And I hope to return soon as possible with a detailed answer, I apologize in advance if it takes me even more time than expected.

Yours,
Erez.

[seahawk]

Regarding #14 from Felipe´s list, you can also use Google Earth to check the position of the sun, before going spotting. I use this a lot, especially for airshows as it tells you when to shoot the static and when the flying displays. Unfortunately the majority of all airshows do not allow to shoo the whole flying display in good light and in most places either the beginning or the end will be backlit.

[ErezS]

Regarding #14 from Felipe´s list, you can also use Google Earth to check the position of the sun, before going spotting. I use this a lot, especially for airshows as it tells you when to shoot the static and when the flying displays. Unfortunately the majority of all airshows do not allow to shoo the whole flying display in good light and in most places either the beginning or the end will be backlit.

It's clear to me, I always try to check it, but when we are going to the "air show" It is not so actual to check it, because the aircrafts and helicopters are doing rounds in the air, and not in static mode ...

[Felipe Garcia]

It's clear to me, I always try to check it, but when we are going to the "air show" It is not so actual to check it, because the aircrafts and helicopters are doing rounds in the air, and not in static mode ...

That's correct, but for the most part, you know the general direction the show will happen. If in general the aircraft are between you and the sun, the chances of getting a good shot are almost none.