dr1

it's an egg! i wanted a high-key feel, but without losing texture.

how did i do?

spotted these strange orange lights overlooking a boat launch in san

francisco bay. with the wispy condensation trails in the sky behind

them, i thought it was a neat composition. what do you think?

 

(fyi, for some reason photo.net's automatic resize mechanism bestowed

upon this photo some ruinous jpeg artifacts, which i've never seen it

do before. i don't know why. please view the full-size version for

sanitary purposes.)

part four of a four-part portrait series shot over two nights, and

probably my favorite of the bunch. this was an exercise in lighting

and skin retouching. i'm curious to know how you think i did,

especially with respect to the retouching. cheers.

spotted this walking by what i guess was an antiques shop at night.

what do you think?

lovely photo and well executed, but it's a carbon copy of the many lovely and well executed photos on the same technical theme: overexpose and desaturate all but the eyes, making them appear iridescent. it worked brilliantly in sin city, but without any additional context, i have to rate this low for originality.

 

i do have one idea for adding some interest to this type of photo: paint something on the face. doesn't have to be anything tremendously complicated, just some nice curve around the eyes / forehead / cheeks to either enhance the symmetry of the composition, or create some interesting asymmetry.

 

hope this helps! cheers --dr

a slightly artsy out-take from a fetish shoot... comments and

critiques are welcome, encouraged and moreover necessary for the

survival of our species.

question: what do you get when you take a dj out of the club and put

her on the beach? answer: the best party i've been to in years.

critiques would be much appreciated!

...because mine has him in it? please comment.

excellent composition! i love how the few simple elements there are in the frame work together to form a unique whole, and i'm a sucker for the wide lens / intense sky combination. if you did any manipulation to bring out the tonal range in this photo, it's not immediately obvious. very nice.

i hope this photo comes close to capturing the awesome vividness of

the makeup and costume, as well as the coy playfulness of the

theatrical character... please comment!

... they smoke cigarettes, drink water and walk tall. comments are

more than welcome!

one sassy girl... please critique!

Hi Piotr,

 

I came across this image by way of your photo-of-the-week this week, and I want to say first of all, congratulations on the award, on your beautiful portfolio and on having the time and opportunity in your life to do this work. That said, I think this image is weak, particularly compared to your others.

 

There are two aspects that I dislike. First is the haze... I certainly think it's important for the background not to detract from the focus of the composition, and due to the haze here it certainly doesn't; but on the other hand the hills in the background and especially the sky and clouds look like an afterthought. I mean in the sense that this is just a very literal, straightforward photo of the castle, and you didn't really notice whatever else was in the image, even as carefully and intentionally as you may have, in reality, composed it.

 

The second aspect that bothers me is the bridge which leads my eye off to the left. The bridge hits that outcropping of land, which is close enough not to be affected by the haze, so it becomes a primary compositional element, to my eye. So the image ends up kind of off-balance as a result, like the castle is somehow cantilevered to the shore by some miracle of engineering.

 

So, to me this is just a snapshot. That honestly makes me feel good, as a novice photographer who has much to learn, because it means even the best photographers sometimes fail to impress. And you are certainly one of the best I've seen. Cheers.

this is a section of the "passion facade" of antoni gaudi's sagrada

familia cathedral in barcelona. i may have looked like a very stupid

tourist lying on my back, head pressed up against the doors, shooting

upside-down, but i absolutely love modern typography and i'm very

happy with how this turned out. i'd very much appreciate your

comments and critiques.

... hanging above the counter in the coolest sandwich shop i ever ate at.

just part of a long afternoon shoot with a friend... if you rate this

photo, i'd really appreciate if you'd take a moment to comment as

well. i need all the advice i can get! cheers.

This shot was one of about 500 I took of my friend this week. As I

was going through them all, this one jumped out at me as

compositionally interesting maybe, and as having a fun attitude. But

I'm sure I could have pulled this off better somehow... I have a

couple others like it, taken from closer up at a more fisheye angle,

but I like the expression in this one the best. Let me know if you'd

like me to upload one of the others for comparison. Your comments

would be very helpful!

The colors and overall exposure are absolutely delicious, but I'd really prefer to see a larger image, on the order of 800x600. It's kind of difficult to give a good critique on such a reduced image. Also, I'd kind of like for things to be shifted over to the right a bit in the frame, so that the rock formation in the background isn't dead-center, and so that we can see a bit more of what's on the left. And I'm not sure, but it seems like the horizon isn't quite level -- that's a bit unsettling.

Compliments on the lighting, exposure and composition. This would do nicely as a stock photo, I think.

please comment and enjoy!

I wasn't sure whether to put this (and its friends) under "portraits"

or "events" -- they were all shot totally impromptu at the Marin

County Fair -- but I want to be able to do a good job in this sort of

shooting situation, whatever you might call it. So comments and

critiques are very much desired! This particular shot I'm very happy

with, but it took a lot of work in Photoshop before I was satisfied...

I wasn't sure whether to put this (and its friends) under "portraits"

or "events" -- they were all shot totally impromptu at the Marin

County Fair -- but I want to be able to do a good job in this sort of

shooting situation, whatever you might call it. So comments and

critiques are very much desired! This shot, of course, I'm very

disappointed to have cut off the dragon's head, but I'm very happy

with the color on the other hand...

this was one of my favorite photos from my trip to mongolia, although

landscapes are one of my weakest areas. your critiques would be very

valuable here! cheers.

Hi Taressa, I think you have good material to work with here, but I would personally change two things:

• There's a bit of color glare in the area of the statue, which was the first thing that caught my eye. A cheap way to fix this would be to make the image black and white. And I think it would be a much more powerful image as a high-contrast b&w anyway. If you try the conversion, you might consider using just one of the RGB channels, say red, or some interesting combination of the three...
• I was also a little distracted by the framing. I kind of want the left edge of the pedestal to be in the frame, and I wasn't sure whether I liked the corner of the building in the lower right, or not... Judgment call, I guess.

Overall, very nice photo, I think! Keep it up. Cheers --dr

In a small Mongolian settlement called Orkhon, a short horseride to

the Siberian border, I found this still life of vodka and kimchee in a

shed, patiently waiting to be photographed. I have no idea when they

got there or why, but I think it may have been one of the better

photos I got in Mongolia (see

href="http://alreadythere.org/v/places/mongolia">my website

for

more). Opinions and advice very welcome!