randy_smith10

Rules are formed over time in pursuit of excellence of technique and expression. Many break rules not even realizing there are rules, or why there are rules, as a result their works just express bad technique and poor results. Then someone comes along who knows the rules but breaks them tastefully and carefully and in a balanced manor to create something most of us have not seen before, ........ and we are vary pleased.

 

Thanks, I see no point in critiquing your work, I have come to say and while to learn from you.

sorry but nothing happening here for me. There is too much space of out of focus trees to be proper negative space, and the trees are too out of focus to be subject matter. the only thing in focus is the guy and you got him cut off at he mid section with his back turned to the camera. So there really is no subject matter, no leading focus of the picture.

vary appealing, great. Can you tweak a little more in the highlights? that is push them up a little higher without loosing details, seems like this could picture could punch your viewer a little harder with light into the high end. Also, and this happens with people also, the eye edge seems to get lost in that dark fir, can just a smidgin of more separation be made to happen here. You need to leave that dark spot in the eye to remain dark, black, because that is a natural black hole.

it looks like two different color temperatures of lighting here with a tungsten light off to the left somewhere. that can be okay, and maybe even a bit more pronounced. But for fun and to separate the head from the background, try using another light source pointed at the subject from behind, and off to the same side as the other main tungsten light. in this case the left side. The light from behind can create a backlight or halo effect giving shape to the head and separation and adding more life to the image and environment. I would crop this by chopping off the top of the head some providing more space for the sides of the head and face. you can check this by using the slider on your browser window on this page.

i get the feeling that the leaf did not get sharp and that you wanted the leaf to be sharp along with the water on the leaves.

 

I also see two specular light sources which feels studio lighting and not natural. If shot indoors you might try an excessively large diffuser excessively close to the leaf with one light source flooding most of the diffuser. You would not have to flood the whole diffuser with light, you could let some of that light fall off to darkness. But this would do several things for you. First the drops are round, and you can't light them really, they are going to reflect back what the round high polished surface of the drop sees. So buy lighting a large diffuser with the light you want to see on the drop reflected back to the camera you can shape the feel and look of that drop of water. If you look close at a smooth Christmas glass bulb you see yourself and the room around you, not the light that falls on the bulb, the drops are the same. Experiment with the light reflecting off of the water by lighting the surrounding environment, this is why the diffuser is excessively close. The other thing it does for you is to get rid of those spots i think you were tying to get rid of.

 

Another thing is there does not seem to be enough uniformity of the drop size and enough of them. In nature they would all be subject to the same physics so they would have similar shape and common sizes. Some of the problems with working with water is it evaporates quicker then you would think, so that by the time you spread it around you should had taken the shot already. you might experiment with a misting spritzer and if you still have a problem with evaporation you could try to ad some glycerin to the water to reduce the evaporation rate.

The fresh state of the flower of the flower is great, but I wonder if there could be better application of Color Theory here or a background choice. They seem to fight each a little { subject vs background }. If you were wanting a plain background maybe white would still be bright enough but would not over power the hot violet. White is more neutral but still bright, i think they might work better together. An odd thing though, I don't know if it is because I am sitting in the dark, but for the first minute or so i thought this background was dark brown and not black. The flowers color has a strong influence, or I am going blind.