Summer Colour III

Note: Please excuse the cut-and-paste comment.  For the moment I'm using attributed ratings but not offering critiques since some members have stated they would welcome such attributed ratings rather than anonymous ratings, regardless of carefully considered critiques or generic comments such as "Great capture!", "Well seen!" or any use of the word "Congrats!" without regard to elements such as careful planning, effort expended or pure serendipity.  This is merely an experiment and nothing personal.  If you would like a critique please feel free to e-mail me: lexnotlex2 at netscape dot net.  I will make a sincere effort to respond to all such inquiries.  Regards, Lex.

Lex has a very interesting approach - maybe I should follow his example.

I will rate this 5/5: The art of photography is a subjective matter but here are my sincere views: you have very difficult light here and glass is involved. I like the composition and for me the costumes are the key elements - parts of which are fully illuminated and the head portions mostly in the shade. I would be striving to balance the tones and trying to get the shaded area much lighter. If you shot in a RAW format you have a much better chance of succeeding. In my case, the Nikon d300 in RAW format gives me plus/minus two stops with which I can play.

I have made a quick adjustment but still needs work  (you can use adjustment layers to achieve what I did - I used capture NX)

Thank you Tony. This is the kind of critique we should all be doing, but of course we don't take the time. I do agree somewhat with the shaded parts being a bit heavy, and they are much heavier in the original! So I have already lifted them somewhat, but I kind of liked the feel of the brightness and shade which retained, for me, the sense of a bright sunny day.

I think I would lift the shade a bit more, as you suggest, especially in the left side, but I don't think I want to have the light "evened out".

I do shoot raw, when I am working on hire, but in this instance I was wandering up the street from a club where I shoot bands sometimes and I had set the camera to jpg because I have found that for casual shooting of that  type of thing, as long as white balance is adjusted jpg involves less work in sorting out a few pictures for them for free.

Thank you again Tony, your comments are insightful and helpful, my images have benefited greatly from your taking the time to examine and truly critique.

Bill

You are welcome.

I can't think of anything substantial to add to Tony's excellent comments and suggested editing.  Even tho' I take plenty of similar photos myself, I seldom regard photos of "found art" as particularly original - statues, sculpture, other people's paintings or sketches, even interesting storefront decorations like this - unless the point of view is unique or there's an additional factor adding a touch or irony or other subtext.  However they can be aesthetically interesting and worth photographing.  Adjusting the contrast and bringing up some detail from the shadows would do the trick for this photo.

Thanks Lex, I really appreciate the comments

Bill