davidlong

Whoa Nelly! I think I would have wanted a much longer lens. Perfect timing, and a simply great shot.

This is a very nice architectural abstract. It's very notable for the composition and the absolutely wonderful tonalities. I have been having a debate with myself about whether the visible edge in the middle of the right side should be included or not. Without it (cropping slightly from the right), I think the picture has a bit more of an abstract quality which suits its mood. On the other hand, having the edge does give a bit more of an impression of a spiral. I think I probably would have omitted it, but I can see an argument for going either way. In either case, it's a great picture.

I think this is a fantastic cityscape. The composition is well-anchored with the foreground monument, and lines formed by the main street leading up and to the right, buildings on the left and right, and the slope of the hill help to carry us to and from other parts of the scene. The perspective shows us some nice silhouettes against the sky, with the castle to hold down the center. There's a nice separation of tones, with the the green in the foreground, the neutrals and tans in the city, and the blues and whites in the sky playing off each other. The monument's darker tone, especially juxtaposed against the sky, reinforces its prominence.

 

I only notice two very minor nits. One is the clouds in the upper right; they're a bit too hot and too prominent. (The ones on the central horizon are not an issue, since any overexposure there only serves to bring out the silhouette more.) The other minor distraction is the crane on the horizon between the monument and the castle. It just seems a bit too out-of-character with the rest of the photograph, and too noticable since it sticks up so much.

 

These are very small issues however, and overall the picture is wonderful.

I think there's some potential in this scene, but I don't believe this picture quite captures it effectively. The most interesting dynamic is probably between the standing woman, and the person sitting on the right. The framing at the moment truncates this interaction a bit. I would have expected the focus to be on one or the other of these figures, though both appear a bit soft. However, it's hard to tell at such a small size exactly where the focus was, or if perhaps there was some motion blur. That's relatively minor in any case. The biggest problem I think is the competition from the background. There's a "whole lot of nothing" going on there. That is, I don't find any elements in the background to complement or play off the main figures, but in terms of brightness and depth-of-field, it competes heavily, to the detriment of the foreground. Since you probably couldn't do much about the light, a much larger aperture to throw the background way out of focus might have helped.

I agree that the light is very nice, and the framing is also good. What I think the photo lacks is a really coherent subject. Everyone seems to be going somewhere, but there's no single person or small group to focus on. Something like a single person who is closer, or who is going in the opposite direction to the rest, would help to anchor the photo. Right now the picture strikes me as being more about the light than about anything else, and I think it's very hard for light alone to hold a picture together.

Thank you for your meta-crique, John. As an exercise to improve my own photography, I've been going through the critique forum occasionally and looking for something that catches my eye. If I find something interesting, I spend 15 minutes analyzing it. At the end, I write a little summary. Hopefully the people find it more useful than the usual "nice shot" sorts of remarks.

I think this is a very good street photo because it has a bit more of a story to tell than most. The slight blur doesn't bother me; if anything, it suggests viewing a scene after having one too many at the bar in an attempt to drown my sorrows after getting taken to the cleaners. The interplay among generations works very well. I imagine: young lovers, oblivious to everything; a middle-aged divorced guy, lazily watching them with a jaded eye; and the older man, who thinks that sleep is a lot better than sex :-). The setting of an airport works very well with these characters, since it leads the viewer to speculate on their destinations, and metaphorically, their futures. I can easily imagine the photo as a view through time, with the young man returning twice more, each time older, though perhaps not wiser, to the same spot. This is a picture that gets better and better the more you study it. Excellent!

 

I just took a look at the color version as well, and actually like that one more, since it shows a bit more separation in the subjects, and since the red/blue/black/white goes very well together. The B&W has a bit more of a gritty feel, which is appropriate for suggesting one aspect of Vegas, but I think on balance, the color wins out.

 

This gives me a very off-balance feeling, which is unusual for a landscape. Obviously the tilting is part of it, but then the realization that it's an upside-down reflection sets in, and then you notice things like the goldfish, which makes it even stranger. I'm not suggesting that that's bad; in fact, it's a nice change from the usual picturesque seen-it-1000-times sort of landscape. I wouldn't suggest looking through a series of 100 like it though, at least not all at once :-).

 

For an even more trippy feeling, imagine the same scene but on a cloudless day, and with the goldfish in the central sky area.

 

I like the composition with the border around the sky, though I think I would prefer it slightly more if the tree from the top didn't quite touch the one sticking up from the bottom.

Excellent! Well-composed, great color, and a nice mood.

This is, to be sure, a very striking image. It's very effective at setting a

"night sophistication" mood. The colors are wonderfully muted and perfectly chosen. Everything has its match--the eyes with the seat, the wine with the lips, dress and jewelry, even the upper wall with the bracelet. Nice textures abound: seating, dress, stockings, hair, bracelet; you can practically feel the picture. The photo is like a perfect world. I like the way the woman pushes right up against the boundaries. It seems as if she implicitly recognizes the boundaries of her existence.

 

If the picture has any flaw, it's perhaps that it's so perfect as to feel a bit cold. Everything--hair, make-up, clothing, pose, lighting, setting--looks like it has been carefully planned, studied, and tweaked to the nth-degree. If I were forced to make up some flaws, the best I can do is that there are a couple of scratches on the wood along the left side, and perhaps the picture could use a very small rotation to the right (the top of the wine glass is not quite perfectly level). Obviously, I'm stretching to come up with anything--well done is an understatement.

Not much to say about this one other than "spectacular"...

The light for this photo certainly has a very nice mood: soft, warm, and tranquil. I like the composition as well, with the alternating bands of brown and green from terraces taking us back and forth across the picture. The textures in the upper leaves show some nice cross-hatching effects. The man adds just the right amount of color.

 

What I don't quite get is the darkish area in the upper left. A recessed part of the hill perhaps? Whatever it is, I really want to see some sort of detail in it. Otherwise it gives the impression that someone took an eraser and rubbed out part of the scene. For me, after studying the picture a bit, it starts to become dominant, which seems a shame.

Excellent! Good exposure, color, and expressions, and a really great use of perspective to make the fighter on the right appear dominant. There are also a lot of nice details in the crowd, including spectators with point-and-shoots :-). The only thing that slightly bothers me is the black area in the upper left, but obviously there's nothing you can do about it from where you were. A few seats to the right would have reduced the effect, but you have to take what you can get.

I like it. It has the slightly ethereal feel of an IR photograph (which it may well be). The perspective is good for bringing the viewer into the frame. And the fog/haze/smoke off beyond the end of the bridge is a nice touch. One meta-suggestion: Don't post quite such a big photo. I wanted to see the larger view, but it's so large that I wound up having to download it and look at a downsized version in order to fit it on my screen. Anyway, welcome to photo.net, but don't expect boatloads of professional critiques.

The timing and focus are certainly very good. Colors are fine as well. The depth-of-field is larger than perhaps is desirable, but I assume you were using a point-and-shoot, in which case there's probably not much you can do about that. The main criticism I have of the photo is the position you were shooting from; I think it imparts a very static feel, which doesn't really fit with the spirit of event. I think head-on, from-behind, 3/4-perspective, etc., would work better, depending on what you're trying to portray.

I have no real understanding or appreciation of architectural photography, so you should take this critique with a full shaker of salt. It's more of an exercise for me than anything else, but perhaps you can find something of use in it, so I will go ahead and post it.

 

The overall impression that I get from the photgraph is one of solidity and permanence, suggested by the character of the building itself plus the symmetric straight-on framing. It's appropriate for the view of a library as a storehouse of knowledge, and in that sense the photograph works. The relatively sparse population of people implies a kind of abstract quality; the knowledge exists as a sort of disembodied truth, removed from the people who create and use it. The positioning of the figures on the inner lawn seems disjoint from this however--they look more like sunbathers than knowledge seekers :-). Perhaps the photo would be more emphatic either with no people (or at least none on the lawn), or in the middle of the busy part of the day when teeming with people, depending on what you want to emphasize.

 

Technically, I would prefer the shot with three changes. First, there seems to be a slight keystoning and/or barrel distortion. It's subtle, but that's the impression that I have, and it disturbs me in what is otherwise such a geometric framing. Second, I would like to see a little bit of dodging to bring out the details between the columns. Third, I think the sky is too bright; it almost looks like it belongs in a different photograph. Either some burning, or perhaps taking the photo during a different time of day would help.

 

Just my 0.00002 cents...

I just came across this on the photo.net home page. It is really a fantastic image. Ethereal, yet grounded; moving between dark and light and back; aged, but still fresh; a wonderful mix. And that tree--it's absolutely perfect; just suggestive enough, a blend of human and natural. I'm usually pretty wordy with critiques, but this one just leaves me speechless. Beautifully done!

This is a curious picture. I'm sure if I had come across the sign "PAY SLEEPER", I would have taken a photo too. Ironically, the man isn't even sleeping; he's smoking! Nicely framed. The only thing I don't like is the window. It's not that it's blown out per se, but that the blown-out area has a hard edge which makes the bokeh of the rest of the interior look strange. Still, a worthy and well-done shot.

Remarkable clarity in the eyes. That's the first thing that really jumps out at you from this portrait. The catchlghts have a very unusual character, which adds greatly to this effect. Eventually, if we can tear ourselves away from those eyes, we come to the rest of the face. I love the expression and position for their ambiguity. Direct, but slightly turning away, and then looking back with those eyes. The mouth parted: starting to speak, pensive, hesitant, afraid, honest, all of these? We are left teetering at the precipice, waiting for a revelation that will never come. It's the moment right before the decisive moment, captured perfectly.

 

The unreal nature of the background, with it's dissolved-in-light hair-like effects, constantly brings us back to that arresting face, though it's not like we really needed any help. It also adds a little hint of age to the picture, as if it is a damaged print from the past, preserved only by the power of that face. If you found this print in a drawer in an old house, you'd be wondering for years: Who was this woman? Does she still live? You could fall in love with a ghost from such a picture.

 

This is truly a beautiful portrait, absolutely stunning.

This picture has an interesting layering of tonality: the canoe and paddler, almost in silhouette; the darker grey haze on the trees; the lighter grey of the sky; culminating in a white sun. Curiously, the effect to me is that the photo looks very flat, almost like the canoeist has been pasted in front of a painted backdrop. The composition, with the bow of the canoe almost touching the shoreline and the very top of the canoeist sticking above it, strengthens the overall effect. Even odder, because of the waves, the reflections in the water somehow look more real than their actual counterparts. Perhaps it's the more varied nature of tones there (due to the waves breaking things up), plus the fact that the tonality in the water is equally as wide as that of the reflected objects.

 

Who knows if this makes any sense; I haven't had my morning caffeine yet. Anyway, there's something about the picture that makes it worth remarking on.

I can't figure out what "A Case of A Vase" has to do with this picture, but the picture itself is very interesting. It's enigmatic, which I love in a photo. Whose blood covers the man? Is he the victim or the perpetrator? We realize on closer examination that the background is tilted, so the man is leaning off to the side. Falling? Recoiling in horror? And what is that on his right arm? The expression on the face is excellent, with a perfect perspective to emphasize his scream or cry. The picture gets a lot of energy from the twist of the body and the position of the arms. The pose strikes me as something you'd see as an anatomy study in an sketchbook from one of the old masters: very exaggerated and dynamic. The color, that sickly streetlight yellow, normally grates on my nerves, but here it suits the picture perfectly and works very well. All-in-all, a fantastic job.

I would say that this photo has a couple of good points and one bad one. One good point is the lighting: directional enough to provide some definition, but diffuse enough that we have plenty of detail in the shaded areas. Another good point is the colors. The red background is a nice contrast to the monochrome of the statue, and the overall red/white/black motif has the potential to be very effective. One might wish for a little more background separation by having the background a little more out-of-focus, but that isn't always possible with a small sensor, and the color contrast is largely sufficient.

 

Where I think the photo is weakest is in the composition. All the energy in the picture comes from Poseidon: he's coiled up to strike at something, and all the lines of body and spear direct us down and right off the bottom of the frame. The result is that all the energy is lost. I feel that the photo really wants a vertical (or possibly even tilted) composition, with a strong diagonal coming from Poseidon and whatever he's aiming at.

I like this photo. The muted colors go very nicely with the quiet water. The perspective does a good job of funneling you in and leaving you wondering what is further along the hidden part of the street that leads off from the center. The scene is nicely ambiguous: no visible people, some obvious signs of age, but also a few hints of life, such as the flowers on the balcony.

 

One thing that I would be tempted to change about this photo is the overall crop. Right now, it strikes me that it's trying a little too hard to show off the reflections. As a traditional scene, I think it works a little better with about the bottom 1/4 removed. Another interesting possibility is to take about 1/4 off the top. That gives the picture a somewhat abstract geometric quality.

This is a very striking landscape for it's simplicity; it almost looks like an abstract painting rather than a photo. Viewing it in that light, I think the photo would be a little better if it had been a cloudless day though. The texture on the ground serves as enough of an indication that this is, in fact, a landscape. Still, this is a very relaxing composition, and one that I would be happy to have hanging on my wall.

 

A bit of an unusual portrait; I can't recall too many others with a person actively smoking. There's good tonality and texture in the face, though there seems to be a slight mismatch with the tone of the hand, which is significantly lighter. I would be tempted to do a bit of dodging and burning to equalize the flesh tones somewhat. There's a good balance of diagonal lines, with the centerline of the face and the hand going one way and the cigar/cigarette/whatever, the smoke, and the line of the eyes going the other. The expression is interesting and slightly ambiguous: quietly confident and self-assured would be my main reading. Overall, a nice photo; I'm guessing your friend likes it also.