cpj

Lovely portrait except . . . that arm is too dominant. The elbow and lower one-third of the arm just dominates the whole photo as it is in the foreground and right in the center. The bottom crop should be just under the shadow of the subject's breast and the right crop should eliminate everything to the right of the first clump of falling hair. This cropping improvement will throw the arm off center and utilize the dynamic tension introduced by the top crop going through the model's hair to reorient the viewer's focus, directing attention to her features and eyes. (Let's be professional here!)

If this is "from life" and the background wasn't artificially supplied, then it is a very nice job of both exposure control and framing. Good work. Info on camera, lens, tripod or not, ISO and exposure would be nice since you are addressing photographers.

Since you cropped it very tightly, top, left and right, wouldn't the impact be heightened by cropping the bottom of the photo just under the man's hand? This would eliminate a bit of shoulder and that carpet or whatever it is at the lower left. Pulling the photo down in my browser completes the crop I suggested and I really think it make it much stronger. I really like the photo and the lighting; it sends many messages on different levels.

A wonderful shot with perfect timing and exposure combined with a fine sense of depth of field. I am a magazine photo editor so I can't help noticing little distractions which I would eliminate for publication. At the left, one-quarter way up the side is a blurry image of a light source that I think should go, and aat the top right corner the faucet arm is a little messy. Both items can be fixed with a very slight crop which I have provided above. [The white smudge on the left is the only real distraction, but is easily eliminated.]

I really like this shot but I'd prefer a title like 'Golden Gate Bridge' and a bit tighter crop. See the attached suggested cropping. The sailboats in the background are gone and you probably can't remember what they added to the massive rock-and-bridge image. The foreground is tighter. The bridge cables soar off the page, leading to the uprights which also disappear so as to focus the viewer's attention on the rock, bridge and great tonality. This is one place where I would approve of using "photoshop" to retouch some fog over those telephone poles in the background. It's not a "news" photo, but a vision thing; retouching tiny imperfections is o.k. if you are going to make an 18 x 28 print for your office wall (but not to enter a photo contest.)

I just don't see any photograph here at all. It evokes no emotion; it's just an image of a vague unbalanced texture. Looks like you accidentally tripped the shutter while exiting your automobile.

The subject area cuts right across the middle of the photograph and the result difuses the visual impact. Either there is too much foreground or too much sky. You have to decide. Right now, while technically very good, visually there is no point of focus. If your objective is to draw the viewer to the reflections of shoreline buildings, the bottom crop should start a quarter-inch under the left house reflection.

 

All the darkness that takes up 1/3 rd of the photo should be cropped out. If this dark area is intended to balance the shoreline and draw the eye to the buildings as well, then there is far too much sky area.

 

To see the difference either top or bottom cropping makes, it is very easy to move this photo on your computer screen so that the foreground or the sky is cut off to produce a stronger image

presentation.

 

Very few photographs work when the main intended focal point is at or very near the center. Cropping either the sky or the foreground will greatly improve the "tranquility" feeling the photographer seems to be trying to capture.

I've seen birds like this, bluebirds and swallows, hit a window, drop to the ground, out cold and then recover in about 10 minutes and fly away. Unfortunately birds hit windows at my place two or three times a year. Perhaps 35% of the time they do recover, much to my amazement. Looks like this one fell on asphalt. As most bird photographers probably know, the birds do have a functional brain, do communicate and display emotions.

Is the subject the roses or the people? Or the large, vine-covered tree on the right? Crop along the walkway about an inch from the couple's feet. Crop vertically from left to about 3 inches (in real life) from the girl's elbow. THEN eliminate 40% of the image area by cropping vertically right through the dark plant stake in the middle of the roses--the one which cuts the left edge of two roses, one above the other. Crop that stake and the roses it touches out. Re-title the photo. You now have a guy and a girl--or a father and daughter--walking on a path heading anywhere . . .instead of a confusing mix of trees and fence in the background and a bunch of out of focus flowers. Voila--you have a "Photograph" and not a "picture."

The photograph is excellent. The cropping could be greatly improved. Are you photographing

a beautiful woman, or a beautiful scarf? The right side crop should go through the left tip of the

black band on the scarf at the woman's shoulder. The bottom crop should be somewhere

through the "tail" of the knot on the scarf--just cutting off the tip of the tail.

 

NOW the "primary optical focus point" for the viewer is the woman; the scarf isn't even seen. If

you are selling scarfs it is cropped well as it is. If you are capturing a woman's image for the

ages, forget the scarf and force the viewer to concentrate his eye on the subject. Recropped,

I'd say this photograph should get the highest of ratings. (Forget photoshoping the nose unless

it is for advertising illustration; in ten years this woman won't look like she does in the photo and

she and her children will appreciate the reality of an unadulterated image.)

As a captured moment in nature the photograph needs no title nor any comment. It is as excellent as they get.

The lower left foreground is far too distracting. Two-thirds of that empty space should be cropped out--about where the right to left grass strand crosses the grass clump almost half-way to the midpoint of the baseline--probably 2-3-inches up from the bottom of the print is where the foreground should be cropped. The globhead of grass at the extreme right edge, opposite the house itself, MUST be cropped out. It is very distracting. Then it becomes a 6.5/6.9 photograph in my view. (I n viewing this photograph several times I never saw the gray sky which so bothered the photographer, and I have been a magazine photo editor for many years.)

This is the best photograph of the entire portfolio. It suffers only from the fact that the photographer didn't see the verticle stabilizer of the P-51 sticking up in the background; eliminating that element would add to the dramatic impact of the photo. This little upwards thrust is just out of place--sorta like those damn telephone poles growing out of people's heads in otherwise good shots. Good thinking on getting the prop blades to point at the corners wne the shot was framed. A little lower angle or one step to the right might eliminate that distracting element in the lower left corner. Nice work with the exposure to retain the cirrus clouds and some blue sky.

This is a difficult shot because of the exposure problem as well as the speed of the aircraft when traveling at a 90-degree angle. It is a rather "common" promo shot for a Navy staff photog but it deserves some credit for getting the exposure right under difficult conditons. (Note the shadows and position of the sun relative to the aircraft.)

 

 

 

 

This photo suffers from the fact the subject it much too centered. From an aesthetic point of view she should have been positioned a little more to the right when making the print. This would add a "dynamic tension" to the image and draw the eye down an toward the right (making the Primary Optical Area contain the bottle and main part of the silhouette.) It's a nice shot, but I don't like all the darkroom screwing around. My personal viewpoint is that a photographer should "see" the photo, shoot it, and then print and crop to present "what he saw" when he released the shutter. Anything else is just "Adobe Photoshop" and not art.