At the Dock

I'm still trying to learn what makes a photo effective visually and what doesn't. It is very helpful to hear I'm doing something right. I was hoping you could tell me what makes it effective and in what way is it well exposed, framed and presented?

Chad

Chad: great photo. I can't speak for Tony, but using his critique as a springboard, I'd say that it's nicely framed because you've really filled the photo frame with the interesting bits (the tie and the shadow). I like the almost straight-on perspective of the tie, drawing the shadow perpendicular to it, yet the image is nicely balanced compositionally because of the almost diagonal mirror symmetry between the top and bottom curves. The lighting is very interesting, allowing the shadow both to expose more of the tie's shape that we can't see, as well as distorting that shape into something all together different. Good capture of the wall texture, nice detail. The exposure is good -- no blown highlights or shadows, good contrast, it's balanced overall. Because the wall's texture is very slight and lost in the shadow itself (I think the focus there is more on the shadow than on how the shadow affects the wall texture), you could play with widening the image contrast to deepen the shadow more and make the image a little more dramatic. Those are my thoughts, at least :) I like this photo very much, you did a great job with it!

Cheers!

John

You have no idea how helpful your comment was to me! Judging from a lot of my other critique requests, I'm doing a lot of things wrong photographically. I guess that when I get deep into the quest for self improvement, I sometimes forget to find out what I'm doing right in order to reproduce the same effects visually. Thanks for taking the time to give me some instruction.

Chad