dick_bolton1

I ike the scale and composition on this one. Paired in sequence with the pic you've captioned "Splash!" you have a nice little story package that is far stronger than either photo standing alone.

What a delightfully whimsical photo! I especially like (a) the high angle from which this was taken to emphasize the little guy's "littleness," (b) the white hat against the dark background and, © overall simplicity of the entire composition. The diagonal line that "Wilbert" is walking along is a nice touch, too.

 

I wonder about the face. Did you selectively adjust the densities there by using Photoshop? There's something about the color balance and tonality that seems a little out of place to my eye.

Color guard - honor guard shots are tough to make really interesting, in my experience. No flag = no context = no story, as a rule. But put the flag in, and there's usually all sorts of dead space, or little more than a snapshot of serious-looking guy(s) with flag(s). What to do?

 

You came very, very close to a great solution here -- with the reflection of the flag in the left-of-center (tall) kid's polished headgear. Perfecting the idea would mean framing much, much, much tighter and timing very carefully -- so what we would see is essentially an isolated portrait of the flag bearer with the flag reflection as a prominent, context-indicating feature in the photo.

I really liked this picture in thumbnail when it popped up on my screen among the recent submssions, and liked it as well in the large view. Just nicely whimsical and simple and pleasing, I think.

 

The choice of a color subject (clothesepins) whose shape is repeated in monochrome as a shadow on the light-toned, neutral-colored wall is a neat idea, and this is a good, clean example of it. Composition seems about right to me, so I would not recommend any specific cropping -- but you might try a few things to see what you think. Biggest concern I have is the relative lack of sharpness in the clothespins -- it looks to me like your focus was on the wall behind them. This is a photo that needs great sharpness in depth. Shift focus to the actual pins, and shoot with a small lens aperture.

Advice to crop tighter was given on an assumption that we are looking at essentially the whole image in the negative frame -- perhaps not a good assumption at all. If it is correct, I firmly stand by my advice to crop in tighter. But if there is more to the neg image -- enough to include other racers without running into the decapitation business -- it certainly would be worth trying a looser composition for the sake of context. In going wider (for future reference), a somewhat larger shooting aperture would provide more starkly selective focus, thereby adding impact without sacrificing the context.

 

As a footnote on this, if you are shooting for publication (especially newspaper), my guess is that most editors would prefer the tighter crop.

"Rules" of composition nicely broken -- "dead space" up the middle, main points of focus near opposite edges of the frame -- for a visually arresting and interesting shot that gets the viewer to look more closely. Nice caption ("Moo!"), to, that engaged my curiosity as I scanned the Critique Forum list.

 

A little burn-in at the top (esp. to the top right) would help bring it on home.

 

 

I suggest cropping significantly tighter above the runner to minimize the distraction of decapitated figures behind him. You might also want to crop tighter left and right. The subject, after all, is this runner as he hits the puddle.

 

A very competent shot.

To your question as to whether this picture holds my interest, the short and blunt answer is "no." Nor would it arrest my attention if it appeared in my morning newspaper. I'd like to see the shots the editors picked to run, betting they had some fire or smoke or some sort of action -- real or implied -- that said "this was a real fire emergency."

 

In news photography -- especially "spot" news assignments -- the idea is to tell the story graphically, and the less ambiguity about what is happening, the better . . . within the bounds of "good taste," of course. This picture raises far more questions than it answers, which is why it doesn't work very well in a journalistic context.

 

Same comments pretty much apply to your photo of the air packs, as well.

Darron, the Green Eyed Monster is on you hot 'n heavy, here.

 

This is a fine shot. Technically outstanding. Artistically -- COMMUNICATIVELY -- sound (the diagonals give it a good sense of movement and speed, and tension). Tight cropping gives it a nice wow! factor. I'd like to see that blank gray wedge of track in the upper left corner gone, but then, I'm one who wants the moon and all the green cheese in it.

 

Of course, the shot is a cliche. But that's not at all a bad thing. Photo cliches (like their word counterparts) become cliches because they were very, very good the first time out, and so are obvious models to emulate. I'm not ready to say "there's nothing new under the sun" (a word cliche), but will say it's unlikely most of us ever will shoot an entirely "original" photo. The trick is to choose our cliches carefully and execute them very well so our work exemplifies why they were worth emulating in the first place. I think you've done that here.

 

I won't give the shot a "rating" because in my view the "aesthetics" and "originality" thing is so vague and arbitrary as to be meaningless, and almost never leads to realistic and proper asessment of the photos in this forum.

 

 

1) Use of a longer focal length lens would have reduced the impact of or emphasis on what here seem like disproportionately large - and therefore intrusive - knees/legs and subject's left hand.

 

2) The dodge/burn business in making the print (or manipulating the image digitally) is a fine trick to help place emphasis on the central subject, but here is overdone and becomes a bit obtrusive. More subtlety needed.

 

3) Generally nice tonal scale in the face, but be careful that you don't block up some of the hotter flesh tones in the uppper arm.

Every now and then I see a photo that I think simply could not be done better, and this is one. It's dynamite in every way -- technically superior, compositionally right on, appealing for its poster-like quality, and -- above all -- an unusual view of great birds we most often encounter as waders in quieter, shallow backwaters or as primitive-looking beasts making their way across the sky with slow, measured wingbeats. I'm awed and envious.