jamespjones

Thats a beautiful image.  Great work.

comments / messages appreciated

What a great image. hell, I don't know how much is photo and how much is post work, but just as a graphical image - what a great image. wonderful.

The colors are lovely and her skin is very pleasant.

 

The cropping is a bit uneven and the dark void in the bottom right doesn't do your image justice. I think a tight crop on the left, cutting off a bit of her hair and possibly a tighter crop on the bottom, removing some of her knee or leg, could remove some of the distractions and really complete the image.

Hi Oksana,

 

I agree with the previous comment. The Rino is well exposed, but the black background doesn't quite work. You did a fine job in cutting out the rino, but you may want to try putting the rino back in its original context. Instead of blackening the background, you could feather the edge between the rino and the background - and use an adjustment layer just of the background to darken it substationally. This would alleviate the odd tension created by the pure black and the rino - the edge is almost too sharp from skin to black as it is.

 

You may want to crop the bottom part of the image off, the corner of his leg doesn't add a lot to the image and without it, you may feel the "bulk" of its upper body more as it fill more of the visible image.

Hi Ben,

 

Looking at the model, I read into her pose and follow her eyes. My eyes go from her face and follow the contour of her body down to her toes. Because she is dead center in the image, she becomes the sole focus of the photo. But, she isn't expressing any particular emotion, so we need the context of her surroundings. If she were off center, it would create a tension within the image that would lend itself to interest.

 

The background is neither sharp nor blurry and I think you would benefit from including more of it. This portrait may have worked better as a horizontal shot including more of the river to the left, cropping out the rock on the right. We would follow her eyes and the shape her body makes as it curves to the left and out over the water. At the same time, if you move off axis to the right a little bit, you would exaggerate this curve further, making the shape more apparent.

 

You have a symmetry created with exactly the same amount of space above her head and below her feet in the frame. Coupled with the centering of her image, she creates almost a straight line up and down; this makes the image stationery as opposed to fluid and moving.

Hi Gordon,

 

Cleaning it up definitely helped. I think the exposure may still be a little on the dark side, but we're in the realm of aesthetic choice. I personally have never tried dressing up the image using art borders, but it does have an impact on the viewer.

Hi Carol,

 

I really like the subject of this photo - at a glance you know what you're looking at and you captured a great moment.

 

Offering a critique; The focus is a little soft - I think you may have a very slight motion blur. I would probably try sharpening the image slightly. His face is soft but rugged so a little sharpening would do him complexion no harm. I would also crop the left hand side of the photo more. This being a digital capture you've cropped the image already. I'm note sure how much wiggle room you have on the crop. He's looking right, so I want him to be to the left of the frame, looking across the frame. We follow his eyes, so we want to drawn across the picture as we look where he's looking.

 

Taking it a step further, his face is in shadow. But, this is a not a very contrasty image. I would try increasing the contrast by bringing up the black point in levels. Also, you could select his face and neck and adjust up his exposure so he's not quite so dark. Increasing the contrast you would exaggerate the notion that this is outdoors in the hot sun.

 

All that being said, I really like the moment you captured - I think you could play with this image to bring a little more out of it.

Hi Gordon,

 

I've tried my hand at bee photography so I know it is quite challenging. I think the capture is what is it, there are probably more interesting angles to try photograph the bee. But, as I know that it is quite hard to do - I want to offer some suggestions on maximizing this image.

 

If this is a cropped image, I would work from the original and move the flower and the bee off to either the left or the right, instead of dead center. It will you give you a more interesting distribution of "positive" and "negative" space. The negative space being the blue sky.

 

The overall exposure is a touch dark. I would play with levels in photoshop and bring the white level down a bit to brighten the overall exposure. Your brightest highlight is sitting at the bottom of the flower and I don't think it is doing much for you. Also, your sensor or your lens may have been dirty. I would clone out the dark spots.

 

So, shifted over, levels adjusted, and cleaned up a touch I think it would make this shot everything it could be. At the end of the day I wish I could see the bee's face.

Hi Michael,

 

I like this photo; I think it is very interesting and really draws my eyes despite the fact that it is in some way gruesome. The focus seems a little soft, and this may be an affect of post processing. If you can sharpen the nose some, without over exaggerating the texture, I think it would help the overall effect.

 

You have a black void in the bottom right corner, and I think it is not helping the composition. If you are leaving it black to be unsettling, then that is an artistic choice. But, you may want to consider cropping some of the bottom, and perhaps cutting just a bit off the right side. Alternately, you could try mirroring the image horizontally and see how it works.

I like the color, I think it has a great mood. In looking at the photo, I wish it had more space on top and it could probably even crop a little of the left side of the base of the lantern to move it a bit more off center and balance it.

 

james

First let me say that I strive to achieve the range of exposure you have achieved in this image. It is a good photo. I think that the ground looks too artificial though. Something about the lightness of the rock directly in line with the horizon on the right side. Also, there is a halo effect going on on the top part of the rock edge that seems a little distracting. I don't know what this would have looked like in person; if the rock would look this bright per se, but you may want to tone it down just a touch - something about the shadows doesn't seem quite right on that light rock area.

 

It is a matter of aesthetic; and therefore you may like this photo just as is where I want a less "super-real" look in the brightness of the rock.

I think I agree with the camp that is in favor of cropping out more of the top. I like this shot

for many reasons; the composition, the model, the mob - but perhaps what I find most

interesting is that I wasn't sure where it was shot. It never ceases to amaze me how similar

western nations (and developed nations in general) can look very similar at a glance. Nice

photo; *good job at taking advantage of a brief opportunity.

It is a beautiful photo and I love this kind of subject - fishermen and their work. I think it is an interesting point about shadows vs. reflections - I haven't really thought about it before - but are these indeed reflections and therefore reflections are relative to the viewer?

A lot of work went into this image, and I must say I was fooled into thinking it was a straight

forward capture (though obviously well composed). Congratulations even more for modfying

it as you did. Also, thank you for posting the other images - there is a benefit to those like

myself who wish to learn what we can out of the details. I have to say I am rather amused at

the lengths to which people have gone to dissect the photo looking for PS artifacts.

Well done. Well composed, beautiful colors, interesting subject (I like trains). I really like the

quality of the motion blur (quality not in terms of technical excellence - quality in terms of

the way it looks).