User talk:Bravada/Photos

Gees, Bravada, you've got photos that could easily make great wallpaper! -Daniel Blanchette 01:55, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, your pictures are excellent! You are not in any danger of being the next Take Me Higher, I especially like the blue C3 and red Alfa picture, the latter could even be an example of car pictures for articles ouhgt to look. Regards, Signature^brendel 03:11, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the current photos are simply taken from more interesting angles than yours. The low camera angle in the top-left photo makes the car look more agressive. Try to get a diagonal view of the car so you see both the front and the side (especially for an encyclopedia article where getting across more information is important). Then generally - make sure the sun is behind you - and use a flash - even in broad daylight. After you have the photo in the computer - play with the gamma settings to tweak up the highlights and get a little more light into the shadows. I often cheat and paint out any distracting background junk (although I don't touch the car itself). Image:Moke02.png (for example) had a big strip of police 'caution' tape running behind the car which totally distracted from the actual vehicle - so I took the time to paint it out. SteveBaker 04:48, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, so I see it's a no from Steve, a yes from Daniel and a 50/50 from Gerd (as the blue Citroen and champagne Alfa are not my pics, please check the captions :D ). Unfortunately, the cars in my photos were facing southwards and it was late in the day, so you can guess the rest :D The photos were digitally manipulated of course - not only I had to remove license plate numbers, but also I had a corner of the street and some people behind the Alfa, so I had to create some fake hedge in the upper-right corner, while the Citroen was "enhanced" by some birds, so I cleaned it up :D I used GIMP as a) I wanted to make it as "free" as possible b) I don't have PhotoShop on this computer, and I've found out that meddling with brightness, hue, stauration and all the other nice stuff is not that easy there, so there they are...
Why C3 and Alfa? Well, the C3 is a very good pic encyclopedia-wise, but I hate how the license plate is done, it is a base version with plastic wheel covers and those black appliques (I hate those :D) and there are some cars in the background - still, my C3 is not very encyclopedic, you can barely see the front :( As concerns Alfa, the previous shot is very aggressive, but there is this guy there and I guess you can't really get a good idea of how the car looks like.
Now, you've got the pics in the Commons, so let's do it that way - if you think they are good enough, put them in the articles, perhaps replacing the pics you find less appealing. Bravada, talk - 10:35, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
PS. It is probably going to be sunny for a few more days, so are there any cars you'd like me to do photos of?

I was actually referring to the Red Alfa, which states "my picture" in the caption. Sorry about the confusion ;-) Signature^brendel 17:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

As many as you can find. Doesn't matter if its a Polonez or a even the rarest vehicle you can find, I say just take as many car photos as you can. Remember, the photos you currently have are good enough to be wallpaper! -Daniel Blanchette 15:01, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that your photos were terrible - just not quite as good as the existing ones. Incidentally, it's easy to adjust brightness, contrast, etc in GIMP. Right click on the image, select "Layer" - then "Colors" then you'll see a bunch of menu items: Color Balance, Hue-Saturation, Colorize, Brightness-Contrast, Threshold, Levels and Curves. All of those are tools to help you adjust color settings interactively. I mostly use the "Curves" tool and drag the brightness curve around - sometimes I'll adjust the Red, Green and Blue independently to make the image warmer or cooler or to match the ambient lighting across several photos. You might feel happier using the Color Balance and Brightness-Contrast tools...it's mostly a matter of personal preference. If you are interested in helping out with car photos, one thing that's greatly lacking is pictures for articles about PARTS of cars. I've been looking at pages like Intercooler and Nerf bar - which talk about specific components of cars - and almost all of those need photo's. SteveBaker 15:09, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

New pics - 22.06.2006

I've spent another afternoon on a photo spree rather than doing something useful... As usual, please have a look at them and tell me which ones (if any) would it make sense inserting in the respective articles, which ones are completely worthless and should rather be deleted etc. - all comments welcome! If some PhotoShop pro could take care of those I would be most grateful - my skills in this area are seriously limited, not to mention time. Which is why I still haven't removed license plate numbers from some vehicles, but still I have uploaded them to see whether it would make any sense to do so, and in hope some merciful user would help me with that... Thanks a lot in advance, everybody! Bravada, talk - 21:58, 22 June 2006 (UTC)