Here is a great picture, available to buy:
Cars driving along the motorway / highway / freeway / whatever you want to call it Motorway traffic
Here is a great picture, available to buy:
Cars driving along the motorway / highway / freeway / whatever you want to call it 
I don't want to sound harsh, but thousands of people have taken pictures based on exactly the same idea, and many of them have got better results. It's not that there's anything wrong with the photo, it just isn't distinctive enough to stand out above other "car headlights with long exposure" photographs.
In terms of ideas for improvement, it would be nice to see a bit more detail rather than just two smudges of light. Maybe a slightly shorter exposure would have done it, or a lower angle (although I imagine that would be impossible given the circumstances of taking the photo). Getting closer to the cars (perhaps by the roadside?) might have helped. The blue sign two-thirds of the way up the frame really ruined things for me as well, perhaps you could photoshop that out.
Another annoyance was the watermark with your URL / address - do you really think that someone is going to steal a 600x400 version of your image? All it seems to achieve is stopping the users of this site from enjoying your work, which I would have thought was the reason that you posted it.
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It was just for fun on the last few shots on a roll.
I see what you're saying and I agree.
If I get to have a car one day in the future I'm going to take some good photos as I'll be able to get somewhere decent.
What do you think about these:
http://www.jonhassall.com/creation/gallery/37.1.35.6.popup.no.html
http://www.jonhassall.com/creation/gallery/37.1.15.6.popup.no.html
I put the watermark on because someone did steal one of my pictures like that.
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Yes, those are the sort of things I was getting at - really effective techniques, particularly the second one.
I know exactly what you mean about needing a car to get anywhere where you can take decent photos - I'm stuck in Cambridge (UK) which has nothing but cheesy over-done tourist scenes to take photographs of.
I think it's a shame that someone stole your photographs, I think that's a bit pathetic of them. How does the watermarking work when you sell them - do you provide a separate preview version?
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Cheers thanks for liking them. I especially like the second one. Its a nice investigation of what those car headlight streaks look like close up. That photograph was taken at 2am on a very misty morning and I was freezing my hands off waiting for cars to come past. I used slide film, as I think it exagerrates contrasts a little better than negatives. I also like the yellow lights in the background from the RAF base. The fog helped to make them cooler.
I've only really tried a watermark on that latest photograph when put up for sale. The watermark was intended to appear only on the preview. I know for sure that if someone orders the print it will be without watermark, but I think its impossible to have the 'For Sale' preview in the online print shop to have a watermark, which seems a shame. To me a 600x400 JPEG isn't going to be very good to print, but I know of at least one person who just put it on his web site :(.
Do you have a web site?
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The preview image on the online print shop does have a watermark, I just hope this means that there isn't one when you purchase the print. ;-)
I do have a web site, but there's not much on it, since I haven't taken any photographs for a year or so. I've just developed a roll, and will drag the enlarger out of the attic tomorrow, so might have some more shots up there soon. :-)
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I thought the picture was okay, and I have nothing wrong with adding a watermark if you feel the need, but that one is HUGE. Why not, in the future, try something smaller. In this case, the watermark not only announces ownership, but ruins the image. How did you find out about one of your images being stolen? I've always been concerned about the same thing, but have never been sure of how to track it.
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I knew someone stole the picture because it was right on the cover of their album!
I can confirm that that printed photograph doesn't have a watermark on.
Yeah that watermark was a bit big. OH WELL.
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Yea... I didn't even think about that.
The for sale image is actually a resized version of the "hi-res" picture. I did that so you can verify that the disiplay image matches the hi-res image so you can actually see what you are buying (so you can't upload one thing for the display and sell another as the hi-res). I wonder if I could add a generic watermark at the bottom of preview like "photographica.org" or something.
- The Beachmaster
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That would be a good idea in my opinion. It would be fairly easy to use GD 2 in PHP to overlay some text over an image, like 'photographica.org preview' for example.
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