jreades

That's not the moon, is it? It looks more like an "earth from space" shot.

 

Regardless, I agree with both comments:

 

1. The planet needs to move further in to the frame so that it's not clipped on the two sides.

 

2. I would lighten up on the blue and go for a more subtle effect -- this looks a bit like you did it using the "Colorize" function in photoshop and I've always felt that that doesn't give the user enough control of the final result for this type of work. I'd recommend looking at the duotone and tritone controls if you have want to retain this blue cast but have it be less intensely blue (which feels, to me, a bit off-putting).

 

HTH

I like the basic premise of this composition a great deal -- the fence brings an original and dynamic (never thought I'd say that about a fence) element to what would otherwise be a fairly static landscape composition. So personally, I'd hate for the next try to lose it completely.

 

What I would suggest is trying to raise the vantage-point so that the view is a bit more downwards, on to the the fence rather than straight at it. That might integrate it a little more in to the rest of the composition by showing it as more of a container rather than a wall. If you see what I mean?

 

Also, it is looking pretty overexposed to my amateur eye, but you've already commented on that so I'll leave off now.

 

HTH.

 

jon

I have *no* idea what this is or how you captured it (the title gives no real clue beyond the fact that it likely involves multiple exposures), but I *do* know that I like it. I might prefer it with a slightly less precise crop (so that the edges are cut off a little more dramatically and the darker triangles don't rest 'just so' on the edge of the picture), but what the heck, it's still a very creative approach.

I'm getting very strange black bands on either side of this photo, and they are not even so I'm not sure that it's supposed to be a frame. Very confusing.

 

Anyway, that aside, an ideal cropping (for me at least) would be one that panned slightly to the right -- I'd like to lose the tiny bit of buffalo on the left and include the right horn (well *our* right, his left) of the buffalo on the right. Perhaps also not copping off the tips of the front hooves?

 

Very nice capture of animal behaviour however, and the cropping issue is fairly minor.

It's unusual to see animals silhouetted -- usually you lose the subtlety of their colouring and 'expressions'. However, in this case it works very well for me since the interest is really in the curves of heron.

 

Even the grasses in the foreground 'work' for me, and normally that would be the first thing for me to pick on. I guess it must be the blur and the tweaks (or what I assume are tweaks) of the foreground colouring agains the black shape of the bird itself.

 

All in all, an original approach to nature photography. Congrats.

It's rare that I find a straight-on picture of a flower remotely original, but this just somehow works for me. I think that the editing out of the background has heightened the delicacy of the petals, and the drops of water with a touch of dirt in them make it more 'real' than it would otherwise be given the lack of general context. Finally, the DOF looks pretty good to me, and the critical part (the bright oranges in the middle) are in excellent focus.

Hmmmmm, great social commentary (or if it was unintended, then great unintended social commentary) but I think that I would have preferred it with the foreground in focus and the background managing as best it could with a shallowish DOF.

 

The logical argument goes something like this for me: the 'topic' that I see in this photograph is the relationship of the woman (who is clearly not able to drive anywhere) to the drive-thru culture of what I can only assume is somewhere in America.

 

So it's really a question of our relationship to this car-culture that is being called in to question by your photograph. So the 'focus' (if you'll pardon the pun) is the human component and that's what needed to be in focus (I say this even though the *meaning* of the shot is still communicated very well).

 

I think that you could have gotten away with the short DOF and focus on the woman because the "drive thru" would probably still be legible even if it were blurred from bokeh. This would also handily deal with the fact that the background behind the sign isn't all that interesting.

 

Of course, a tripod would have allowed you to capture it all... but by the time you'd gotten it all set up you'd probably have missed this shot so I feel that you've done the best you could with the time available.

 

So to summarise -- I think that this is a great 'catch' and a rare example of social commentary on photo.net, but that a slightly different setup could have delivered a truly great picture instead of just a very good one.

Ryan's feedback and suggested crop are great -- he's excluded the bland areas of the full photograph and the focus is now really the model and her expression. This makes for a much stronger photograph.

You've got a tough shot to get right here -- the dark suit in a very bright environment is always going to be very hard to expose properly. The real issue, for me, is that the shepherd's face is completely lost in this exposure so we're missing the really expressive portion of the frame. I'm not sure what you could have done to get this right because had you exposed for the face I'd probably be complaining that everything else is washed out...

While I find the rapper-thing (that is a rap hand-gesture right? Am I *that* old?) a little disturbing in a child, that doesn't detract from the fact that this is a good portrait from the standpoint of capturing a lot of character and humour.

 

Exposure looks good in general to my eye too -- perhaps a *tiny* little bit dark on the face and t-shirt (which I assume is supposed to be white but which, if you look closely is off-white [although it's in shadow], suggesting that a bit of brightening might be in order).

 

Nice one.

I suspect that this shot might benefit from an off-centre composition -- the placement of the ladybug right smack in the middle makes the overall picture a little to static for my personal taste. Also, is that dust in the scan just below the bug, or is that dust on the cactus? It looks like some kind of film/scan artifact bujt I can't be sure.

I wasn't trying to sound like a photo school lesson, but you did ask for a critique and so I was offering a comment on what I felt to be the weakest aspect of the picture.

 

If you want to focus on bokeh and atmosphere that's fine, it looks like you've got a lot of good material to work with. But the tilt on the horizon prevented me from appreciating those qualities in your work.

 

You could quite quickly rotate the canvas in Photoshop by (ballpark guess) 1 to 2 degrees clockwise and then we could appreciate your photography much more.

 

HTH.

Aaaaaah, we're being swept away!

 

Sorry, I couldn't resist -- there's a *really* strong tilt to this photo that, looking at some of the verticals, leads me to believe that it's probably a mixture of *actual* lean and camera tilt. The net result is really disturbing to me and made me feel like the buildings on the right side of the image were about to slide into the sea on the left side. Thus my rather silly opening line.

 

I don't honestly know quite how to 'fix' this image -- I think that if the foreground were on the level it would be less disturbing than having the background be off-level. Actually, looking a little more closely at the photo, I suspect that the real issue is the dark line of wall behind the wave and in front of the background eating area. My brain wants to see that as flat (because the line of water along the bottom should be roughly horizontal and the top should be roughly parallel to that) and it clearly isn't. Alternately, if you were to crop out some of the visual queues that tell me something isn't flat then that would help as well.

 

And finally, have you considered adjusting the contrast slightly? The highlights are a little flat and the shadows could use a touch more contrast too I feel. Personal preference only.

 

Regardless, it's quite a dramatic shot that seems to only need a bit of tidying up to make it come together very nicely.

Have you considered a black and white version of this photo? I think that that would pick up the interesting shapes of the... warehouse? airport?... and add more drama to the photo. I might also consider rotating the photo slightly (you appear to have a slight left-to-right slope) and cropping out some of the bottom... You might even *consider* cropping out some of the left-hand side so that the object is becomes more of a dynamic element in your photo and you can lose the far background 'stuff'.

 

HTH

The contrast range in this photograph is what makes it work for me -- it means that the dark tree trunks provide a rhythm and balance to the composition that would be missing if only one tree had been captured in the photo. As well, the flowers around the base of the foreground tree are adding something important that I can't quite put my finger on...

I don't think that you've left this kestrel with quite enough room to breathe -- I can see why you've done this crop: it's balanced left-to-right. But I think your photo would lose nothing if you were to pull back and lose most of the grey frame. Wild birds don't really belong in cages and this one feels that way because of the grey surroundings.

 

That said, it's a *gorgeous* photograph of a kestrel with fantastic detail on the feathers and an fabulour pose with him/her looking at the camera.

Very nice photo -- the type of landscapes that I aim for but that, living in London, I have too little access to.

 

The colours in the far horizon look a little washed out to me. My guess is that it's actually either haze, or the exposure needed to capture the foreground and middleground properly, but the area of clear sky seems a little too white and the mountains in the distance also appear (to me) to have too much white in them.

 

If you were to burn that back area a tiny little bit I think that it would lend further drama to the picture and pull it together very nicely.

I can tell by the care given to the piano keys that you've got very strong Photoshop (or equivalent) skills, but I don't 'get' what you're trying to do with this photo. I have no problem with, for instance, your collage with the wolf's head and meadow of sheep (obvious enough), but what does a piano have to do with fields of wheat and the open sky? It still *looks* nice, it just doesn't make sense to me... Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious.

If you are going to have strong horizon lines (i.e. the edge of the steps where the stone platform ends) in a frame, then it becomes important to pay attention to lining them up exactly with the borders of your photo -- this photo has a distinct lean from right-to-left that is very distracting.

I've tried this shot myself, so I know how tempting it is -- it *looks* so photogenic but I've never managed to get it to come out right.

 

I think that the problem is that articifical lighting is too muted and directional... what this needs is a healthy dose of sunlight and something bright (as in the green of a slim flower or fern, or whatever colour tickles your fancy).

 

I think that it would also help to look at some of the top-rated still lifes (still lives?) to see how they work with a very static composition but manage to deliver real impact -- the arrangement and juxtapositions of objects is crucial for this and I think that if you were to change both the angle of view (lower) and the relationship between the two vases then you could find yourself with a much more powerful image.

Could you try rotating the image 5 to 10 degrees clockwise? It's *very* distracting to have something appear to be off-centre to the degree that this image is... On the plus side, the lighting looks nice and dramatic -- is this something that you did in Photoshop? The shadows look very dark which isn't something I'd quite expect at sunset...

I guess I'm in the minority then -- I do still like the idea of a crop but am thinking of one somewhere between Dave's and Frank's crops.

 

Frank's crop in response to Eric's suggestions feels too tight and because the leaf is occupying correspondingly more of the frame the balance with the grey is lost (as others have noted).

 

In Dave's version it feels slightly too high up on the photo because the crop hits the larger pools right where the effect seems a little indecisive as we've *almost* included the entire pool, but not quite.

 

I wonder if the crop were lowered by just a bit so that it runs just above the light area on the right pool and just below the horizontal top-edge of the left pool if that wouldn't perhaps work?

 

I'm speculating here, and the fact remains that this is a striking image that is all the better for its simplicity. Congratulations.

The clarity and bokeh is lovely, but I would probably find the image more compelling if more of the left-most player were in the frame -- since we can see more of his face and the clear exertion in his arm, it actually makes him the focus of my attention rather than the player folded around the ball... seeing a bit more of him would emphasise the struggle between the players. Either that, or maybe try cropping his head out completely (although then you'll be left with a disembodied arm).

There isn't really anything in here to hold my attention -- the strong lines that you have in some of your Normandy photos and in, for instance, the black and white of the young children dancing, are missing here. I would *guess* (complete stab in the dark here) that you were intrigued by the possibilities of the yellow flowers against the overall green-ness of the background. Unfortunately, I don't really see how the flowers can carry the entire photo on their own... they need some support from the other elements and they aren't really getting it.

 

Your "Provins Castle", "Palais Benedictine", and "Fecamp harbour" show much more strength because of the strong lines and shapes within the image.

This seems too strongly a Photoshop output for my taste. I guess it could be an artifact of the photo merge process, but the leaves near the top look profoundly wrong to me and the strange lens-flare isn't working for me either.

 

By contrast, your architectural photographs are much more appealing (especially the black and white ones) for being much less (if at all) retouched *and* being well-conceived to boot. I also really like the "colour slides" folder.