Blast Furnace

The only advice you need is too keep on going, your making excellent well composed images.

Ian

Hi Rhys,
This must be close to big pit.
Print seems pretty reasonable to me. The lighting was fairly flat and maybe you could show off the forms of the furnaces if you could pick a day that gave some side-light on them.
Best wishes,
John

I may have chosen a different camera position. The rail that is nearer the pit would have provided excellent leading lines into the composition...tightened up the image and led to a more coherent and cohesive composition. As it is, the foreground rail does not contribute to the composition...instead in poses as a barrier rather than an avenue into the scene.

With the flat lighting, I may have opted to exclude the sky and focused on making my composition from the furnaces, the shapes, and details inherent therein. The exclusion of the sky from your composition would have allowed you to expand your film development and built more local contrast in the details of the blast furnaces.

Just a couple of thoughts...we never see things the same way and this is not to say that what you did is wrong...just that there are compositional tools that will lead to stronger images.

Depends what you are trying to show. If it's industrial decay then I like the touch of the broken rail and rotting sleepers despite accepting Donald's point of it forming a barrier.

The sky may be helpful showing as it does that in all industrial ruins, nature, including the sky, eventually intervenes and things revert to, well, nature.

Thank you all for the very insightful comments, I see what you mean about the rails in the foreground and to be honest didn't really notice the other rails (in the mid-ground) until after I developed the film.

This is literally just round the corner from Big Pit (you have to drive past here to get to it) and I only live 20 mins away so I think a revisit may be on the cards.

This print is really good, especially for someone new to printing! I would maybe burn the lower corner a hair and ease up a hair on the sky. That is all I have to say.