Feedback Please

I am trying to get some feed back on my pictures. If you could leave a comment that would be amazing. Thank you so much!!

 

It’s a nice shot capturing a sweet moment. How do you feel about the depth of field? Because there’s already blur in the movement of secondary kids in the foreground, I’m thinking the blur of the people in the background, especially the main woman, grabs my attention. She’s prominent enough to where the blur doesn’t really fade her out of the picture much so it winds up just feeling like she’s out of focus to me but for no real reason. I think it would make more visual sense for her to have been in more focus, where she could actually become an interesting part of the story. As it is she’s part of the story but the focusing isn’t letting her really be so, so she winds up too much in limbo. I think when there’s a very individual subject that’s being brought out on the street, a shallow depth of field like this can work. But I think for a lot of street work, especially with a contained composition like this, the shallow depth of field feels overly imposed onto an otherwise very natural street scene.

You've caught the action really well, it's worthy of praise, but the action is predominately in the bottom half of the photo. I'm just wondering where the out-of-focus people and street objects fit in with this action, other than to indicate it's a street scene. It appears the shot was taken with a camera with a waist level viewfinder, or did you crouched down and shoot it with a camera with eye level finder ?

 

It's debatable, but perhaps if the camera was a little higher up and angled down a little, the "action" could have filled the whole frame instead of only half the frame, with unnecessary subject matter excluded from the picture. It takes lots of practice and forethought, but it becomes second nature after a while

 

Here's an image I took with similar pictorial arrangement as your pic. It has action lower in the frame and out-of-focus spectators in the background. The spectators are part of the event, but should I have included them in the scene ? It's probably down to personal taste and how you want the occasion to be remembered

 

You can always crop. Before zoom lenses, one would expect to crop on printing.

As zoom lenses are now popular, cropping is less important, but still useful.

 

Often enough, shots with kids look better when taken lower.

It isn't quite as convenient for use when we get taller, though.

Glen, how would you crop this?

If the pillow fight was my shot, I would crop out the crowd and adjust the exposure a bit. Can certainly show an example. As to the original, an excellent shot, it is one where a square crop from the left would really focus on the action IMO.

For me, the crowd adds good storytelling, depth, and interest to the pillow fight. I sense the photo is purposefully done in a more high key tonal range, a stylistic choice which seems to go with the content and makes it a bit less typical.

 

While I agree with Sandy that a crop from the left in the OP's photo would focus on the action more, I think overall the photo would lose dynamics and movement by being square. I think street work, in particular, is often suited to a horizontal crop and I'd say that's the case here. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions. The sign being cut off gives that unfinished feel that good street work often has, and showing more of the street provides that sense of place and mise en scène, as well as a sense of casualness and the moment. The negatives of the formality of a square crop, here, for me, would outweigh potential benefits of focus.

Edited December 1, 2018 by The Shadow

As noted, how you crop depends on what you want the picture to say.

 

For the OP picture, I like a crop around the standing boy and the one who is about to get stepped on.

 

If the people in the background were watching the action, then they would be more interesting to keep.

It does make you wonder why they aren't following the action, unless there is something else

happening even more interesting.

 

For the pillow fight, the people in the background don't seem very interested in the action.

I think I like it better without them, but I do understand that they are supposed to be part

of the event. If they were standing, cheering, maybe jumping up and down, they would

be much more interesting. (Not the photographer's fault, though.)

Referring to OP’s picture, one thing I sometimes find useful is, if there’s distracting elements like a blurred but not so blurred human figure in the background, and there’s no way to crop or clone them out, make them a bigger part of the scene by cropping other open areas. This might sound counter intuitive, but making the blurred elements bigger spreads them out as part of a bigger background and tend to be less annoying.

 

So, my suggestion would be to crop from the right up to the trash bin, to expand the blurred figures occupying the frame. Keeping the blurred kid in the foreground bottom left along with the blurred woman in the background can balance each other and create sort of a natural framing for the central subject in focus. Also, the foreground kid can provide context for the kid centric theme. This cropping would also make the disembodied legs on the right more prominent, and those along with the slightly slant horizon would add to the frivolous character of the scene. It waits to be seen, how all this works out, but my feeling is, won’t be too bad.

Edited December 1, 2018 by Supriyo

I think, one of the issues in the OP’s photo is also the quality of the blur. The bokeh isn’t very appealing possibly due to small sensor, but I like the rich grey tonality.

For the OP picture, I like a crop around the standing boy and the one who is about to get stepped on.

I don't see how that could work. If your point is to crop away the people in the background, you wouldn't be able to crop them out completely. What you'd be left with is a partial sign with a few pairs of legs and shoes still in the frame, which would be pretty awkward.

For the pillow fight, the people in the background don't seem very interested in the action.

Though they're in blur so it's hard to tell, they all look like they're looking directly at the action to me. I very much feel their presence in the story, not just because they're there but because, to the extent I can see it, they seem very much interested and involved.

As noted, how you crop depends on what you want the picture to say.

Yes. An important point. A lot of these decisions depend on what the photographer wants to convey.

 

To be honest, I generally have a preference for photos like this (that are not limited to a single subject and that have backgrounds that have potential to add to the stories) to have a greater depth of field. I see pictures frequently that I think use a narrow depth of field for emphasis when perspective and taking advantage of lighting would be better ways to go. Having people in blur will work sometimes, of course, but often it just doesn't cut it for me and puts other people in the frame into a no man's land.

 

In both these photos we're discussing, I think the depth of field blur does not work well given the content and I think the content could have been better dealt with through different approaches to perspective and with some work with burning or lighting adjustments in post.

What I notice the most is how the boy is almost perfectly framed by and against the white street sign.

 

Good point.

Though they're in blur so it's hard to tell, they all look like they're looking directly at the action to me. I very much feel their presence in the story, not just because they're there but because, to the extent I can see it, they seem very much interested and involved.

 

Thanks for responding to the pillow fight, I hoped you would do that because it provides an insight as to the relevance or not, of "movie extras" in the two stories, both yours and mine. Fact is, IMO neither shot would suffer if the "extras" were left out of the captured scenes. But now that the photos are taken with no chance of going back to take them again, cropping the tops of the images, would not be practical nor desirable perhaps, if the stories in the only images we have are ruined

 

So we come to cropping the right side of yours, as others have suggested to draw viewers interest on the in-focus action. Three crops and the one that appeals to me best is the last one. The running boy is more prominent and my eyes stay on him and the action longer than the first two crops. I think it's a big improvement.

 

 

 

 

kmac, none of these photos are mine. I just supplied some comments.

(snip)

Though they're in blur so it's hard to tell, they all look like they're looking directly at the action to me. I very much feel their presence in the story, not just because they're there but because, to the extent I can see it, they seem very much interested and involved.

 

Well, I am better at the science of photography than the art, but even though they are blurred, it looks like many have their arms crossed, sort of like they are waiting to get over with it, and onto whatever is next.

 

But otherwise, you want to blur the parts that the viewer should ignore.

 

When my brother got his (then) brand-new AE-1, one of his early pictures had (I think) a girl, with the background completely blurred.

As he didn't know anything about depth of field, only that the camera would (hopefully) get the exposure right, he was lucky.

 

In this case, they aren't completely blurred, so we don't know if we should pay attention to them, or not.

kmac, none of these photos are mine. I just supplied some comments.

 

Oops my apologies - To AaronSmilow, the opening poster, I dedicate the three crops in reply #15 to, for his adjudication

A suggestion is attached below

 

I am trying to get some feed back on my pictures. If you could leave a comment that would be amazing. Thank you so much!!

 

[ATTACH=full]1272983[/ATTACH]

I like the tonality range of your picture, nice and contrast. Real b&w.

 

What film and développer did you use?

A suggestion is attached below

 

[ATTACH=full]1275897[/ATTACH]

IMO, a much more typical contrast adjustment and, to me, less expressive and individual. The original more hi-key processing conveys the warmth of the sun more. The “adjustment” seems to be to a photographic standard of good taste, which I find less interesting though much more expected.

Hi, I think this is excelllent photo! My only suggestion is that the boy's hair is perhaps less diffened that than the rest of his body. You might want to consider lightening the shadows a bit.

 

I am trying to get some feed back on my pictures. If you could leave a comment that would be amazing. Thank you so much!!

 

[ATTACH=full]1272983[/ATTACH]

The indifferent background crowd adds nothing. They actually distract from the 'action'.

 

The OOF child with its back to us adds nothing either.

 

My background in darkroom printing says - burn 'em out! 'Burning', in this case means darkening the exposure locally to subdue unwanted detail. Removing them altogether would need quite a severe crop, and still leave the woman's arm as a background distraction.

This. The woman in background should also be "burned ou, as suggested above by rodeo_joe. But I don't feel like firing up PS.

This. The woman in background should also be "burned ou, as suggested above by rodeo_joe. But I don't feel like firing up PS.

 

I'd have cropped the top of the picture hard too.

 

If you're going to dodge or burn in an image editor, do not use the dodge/burn tool. It's crude and unconvincing.

 

Instead I propose the following:

Create a new duplicate layer.

Change to the base layer and darken or lighten it to taste using the curves tool.

Switch to the duplicate top layer.

Using a large soft eraser brush with a low opacity, rub through to the altered lower layer where it's desired to dodge or burn.

When done, merge down the top layer.

 

The above method is very controllable and can give a result indistinguishable from darkroom manipulation. In fact it can be much better.

Edited January 14, 2019 by rodeo_joe|1

It looks like Aaron has left the building...