Oh wow, that's crazy. Where did you take it, from a bridge? Did you do any post editing?

Yes, it's taken from an overpass looking over the interstate. Not too much post-processing, just a curves adjustment and saturation. Other than that, this is as shot.

Nice. Love the light trails.

I really like the shot, and how you managed to get eerything else out of the image, and make the sides dark is very cool.

my favorite part of this is how everything runs to the same point. My least is how I don't know where the picture is coming from. What am I looking at? Is this an abstraction, I am seeing it as a real thing so I guess their could be confusion because of that.

I'm not sure about the composition. It feels like it has been shot too much down rather than giving me, the viewer a sense of scale/perspective. I might also have closed the f-stop thus allowing for an extended exposire and hopefully a few more light trails. It meets minimal but there is perhaps a little too much in the way of dead/negative space. A form of focal point beyond the road markings may have made this a little more interesting. Getting light trails is the straight forward part, it's the composition that is tricky. Especially at night. I hope this is constructive enough.

I have to admit I'm a bit of a light trail geek. I've always loved photos with them, so I'm predisposed to liking this shot. I don't agree with mooch about perspective. I think this image stands on it's own as a quasi-abstract composition. I'm willing to bet including more at the bottom of the frame would have yielded a concrete overpass where you were standing and that tilting up would have added some distracting non-road stuff that would have taken away from the central road theme.

I'm not sure I could improve on this image. However, if you wanted to take a slightly different tack with it, you could make it an exact mirror image so that you had an equal number of trails on either side of the dotted lane line. That might be fun.

kadenjack, I shot similiar on a concrete overpass, look at the one on my profile, you'll see exactly what I mean, as an example. rather than merely rhetoric, if you follow. this image has too little focal point and too few light trails.

Mooch,

I certainly see your point, but I think the two images simply demonstrate a different approach. I was going for something more minimal and abstract. In your photo, that's obviously not the case. I see no reason why one is more valuable or successful than the other solely on this point.

I think, ultimately, to achieve a minimal image with this sort of shot would entail: central line (dead centre) and just two light trails, one for each red light on the car. I would crop the dead space to either side of this image and make the blacks, very black. As a minimal subject I think that you have really set yourself a task. Are you going to submit a new and improved version generated by these subsequent comments or is this just an exercise?

Mooch,

Thanks for your continued dialogue. I'd love to submit an improved version, though all I could really change in this case is the crop you mentioned (I would agree) and centering the composition...

I'll see what I can come up with, but I'm not sure how dramatically improved it will be.

Okay, here's what I came up with from just a quick edit:

www.seekingfocus.com/WS/20070125_0125_edit.jpg

I think to really improve on this idea would entail re-shooting this with the aforementioned improvements in mind. I likely will try and do this in the near future, as I do like the idea.

I cropped the image to get rid of a bit more of the empty space and positioned the dashed white line dead-center. I also removed the right-most light trail that drifted out of the right side of the frame. I took two light trails from the right side of the image and copied them to the left, to balance it out a bit more.

Still, there is obviously a difference in balance from one side to the other (the left side having the obvious hole). Perhaps someone a little better versed in Photoshop would be able to achieve some better results than I.

I don't think an exact mirror image or having only two light trails would be the answer in my opinion. If I were to re-shoot this shot, I would compose it as to have a dead center line in the middle and try to have the trails come to a point in the top of the image. I'd also try and have approximately the same amount of trails on either side of the center line.

Thanks everyone for the dialogue and all the comments! It is certainly greatly appreciated!

I really like both mooch's and Jason's images. Of course as already stated, I'm a light trail geek. I'm really getting inspired to see if I can do something along these lines now.

Incidentally Jason, you could make this image have the light trails come to a point at the top of the image with a simple distort in photoshop since your background is completely black, it would be easy to pull off.

Harder to pull off would be to re-shoot and get an equal number of trails on either side of the center line.

kadenajack,

You're right about the distort in Photoshop. It would probably work, though I'd rather just give the whole thing another try.

I'm not too worried about getting an equal number on each side, just as long as each side is more or less balanced.

Ok, glad I could help. I think the new version looks alot slicker. It is difficult to get a balance between critique and critiscm. Especially when you can be as blunt as I am! Also, I was perhaps more vociferous with critique having seen your work on Weekly which is always of a high standard.

Hey mooch,

Always Welcome! Lay it on me, that's why I participate here and on Weekly Shot!

Thanks for the exercise and the positive comments.

This is very cool!

I like how sharp the image is! Very nice!!!