david_eppstein

March 30, 2003

Good eye contact and pose. But too much depth of field to make this look like more than a zoo snapshot.

March 23, 2003

I found this folder from your dpreview post. This shot is the one I like best: the color and composition to me are both clearly better than the other three. Hair across the face and eye is not a problem for me, and I like the centering. What I like least, actually, is the way her hair color and texture goes wierd in the top center -- looking at the other photos, I can see that it's the model more than you, but you have an overexposed highlight that's accentuating the effect.

March 7, 2003

in my own experience sometimes my (compressed)uploads seem quite a bit darker.

Perhaps this is a color space issue? I upload the images as untagged sRGB and they look the same when uploaded as they do on my own computer.

March 7, 2003

Mark -- what do you mean by "the original" for a digital photo? It's darker and a little less orange than I would have gotten by using the default raw conversion settings, if that's what you mean, but I didn't deliberately adjust the saturation.

March 7, 2003

The olive sky and brick water give an unpleasant chemical industrial feeling. Maybe that was the intention?

March 7, 2003

Nicely caught moment, well framed. You did this with an 80-200? That seems short for this kind of shot.

March 5, 2003

The chair legs lead out of the photo. This doesn't feel like a whole composition to me.

March 5, 2003

I wouldn't have thought something so colorless and centered could work. Interesting and original abstract.

March 5, 2003

I like the colors and the abstract nature of the composition, but it feels too tall to me. Maybe a little off the top and bottom?

March 4, 2003

I'm a sucker for backlight, and the tight crop and shallow DoF make for an interesting abstract composition. Not sure this wouldn't be better if it were a little brighter, but nice job anyway.

March 4, 2003

Interesting abstract, but the lighting does not look real to me (too saturated, I think) and the composition is too binary and too equally split. It needs some third thing to balance it.

March 4, 2003

Very effective use of low-key lighting.

February 11, 2003

Thanks, but that's not sky behind the apples, it's a forest of coast redwoods.

February 9, 2003

If you're going to post pet snapshots here for critiquing, at least fix the red-eye.

February 3, 2003

The tight crop and off-center nested triangle shapes make this one much more interesting to me than some of your other flower macros. Light is still too flat, though.

February 3, 2003

Interesting how you create such an effect of mystery with such sparse materials.

February 2, 2003

A little busy, but otherwise nice. I think the blue lighting works well for this photo.

February 2, 2003

I think this may be more successful than the drinking fountain photo I posted here a few months ago. But it's a little impersonal, especially because the fountain has its back to the camera, and I think there's too much negative space on top.

February 2, 2003

What are all the horizontal stripes in the background, it almost looks like a scan of a bad inkjet print? Beyond that, I like the color, the wet feel of the flowers, and the blurred-out background. The shapes in the upper background make a nice abstract composition, but the edge of the bright green foliage filling the lower background is too centered, and I also don't think centering the flower stalk was the best compositional choice.

February 2, 2003

Nice triangular composition. I like the hard contrast between the white lilies and the dark background. Kind of an overdone subject, though...

February 1, 2003

Nice abstract. Doesn't seem to pull my eye to any one center of attention within the photo though (the straws or whatever they are lead to the upper right corner and the hot spot on the right also leads out of the photo).

January 31, 2003

Nice light, but too centered. More fundamentally, though, what are you really trying to say about the bicycle and the tree? They're just there, but don't communicate anything to me. And after I look at the picture for a while the foliage dropping in from the top left gets a little distracting.

January 31, 2003

A little subjectless, but the trunks and branches have a nice rhythm. Maybe not quite so equal space on the left and right margins...

January 31, 2003

Too obviously flashed, and no clear subject -- the flower cluster conveys the impression of lots of little flowers, none of which is noteworthy, rather than one big impressive flower. Background color is kind of sickly looking (too much red?). Cropped right edge looks a little haphazard, but the overall composition is too evenly framed around the flower cluster, without enough negative space on any side.

January 30, 2003

This is my favorite of your crowned crane shots. If you're using any fill flash here, it's much more subtle than the other ones, I like the way backlighting highlights the crown, and the shallow DoF helps reduce the background clutter. Looks a little uncontrasty though, and I can see what looks like grain in the darker parts.

For comparison, here's a link to my own best image of the same kind of bird. The lighting is similar, but I found a medium-toned background that contrasts nicely with both the bright crown and dark head. Unfortunately, my shot is way too unsharp, and also missing something in terms of eye contact...

Sign In

Profiles

Forums

Blogs

Events

Downloads

Gallery

Store

Image Comments posted by david_eppstein