Photo Critiqing Thread

[nwoods]

This weekend somewhere on Cedar Mesa. Thoughts?

Its an awesome photo, but to me on this monitor, it looks a bit oversaturated, slightly overexposed, and a bit undersharp. Also, I would like it to be formated more in the 16:9 format, with the window not being dead center, but more to the right of the frame, allowing more sky/horizon to fill the frame on the left.

 

[thecriscokid]

I'm pretty new at this. I have read some basic books on the functions of a camera (I have a Cannon Rebel XTi 18-55) and within the last year I have been trying to capture whatever I can.
Here are a couple from today. cloudy day, great bike ride, just missed the rain...

[/IMG]
1/1000, F4.0, +1/3, ISO 400

[/IMG]
1/60, F16, ISO 400
I feel like it captures the speed, but the rider is not focused enough. I feel like I see pics like this in bike mags all the time though...

 

[Ford Prefect]

Hey guys. I've been watching this thread and enjoying what you have to share.

I took a shot the other night that I really really like. I'm just curious what those of you with a more profesional eye might have to say.

I took this hand held.
50MM lens
F2.8
1/40th of a second

I know, Ryan, that you posted this a while back, but I thought I would make a comment, if you don't mind.

This is one of those places that you see a LOT of photos taken. The Salt Lake City Temple of the Church of ************************ of Latter-day Saints, yes?

That body of water is very hard to get a shot off when it is not moving, but if it had been more clear, or less, that would have been nice to my eye. You see how the bed in which Jesus is laying reflects very well the lower part of the bed, yet as your eyes move down it turns into a big blur. I think that one or the other would have settled the eye down more, and allowed it to see what you were seeing. Reflections shots, in my mind, always have a risk of being so busy that you fail to see the rest of the shot.

The light is great in this shot, for me, and I really like it. The temple is very subdued in the background, and it keeps your eyes on the prize from the halfway point and up.

Another thing is the snow. Personally if I were wanting to make a very serous go of the shot I would not want the snow there. It looks fine for Joesph to have some in his lap, and cost, as well as the "ground" on which his feet lay, all of that looks ok. Where it climbs up on his arm is a touch distracting, but worse is where it is in Mary's arms and lap, and where it completely obscures Christ. It looks like they are staring at a big pile of blankets. You wonder if they are saying to one another "Is it your turn to do the laundry, or mine?" Obviously this is not what you want going through the mind of the person seeing the photo. I think I might have cropped out the tree on the right as well. It is a bit of a distraction (to me) considering there is nothing to balance it.

All in all I think it is a great shot, just the timing could have been different. I will also mention that I must congratulate you on getting the shot at all, "without" people in it, very hard to do down there. The three people that I see in the photo are so hard to see that you pretty much do not even notice them when you look. Thanks for sharing it.

Curious choice for your subject considering your tag line though.

Cheers

 

[GaryMc]

Its an awesome photo, but to me on this monitor, it looks a bit oversaturated, slightly overexposed, and a bit undersharp. Also, I would like it to be formated more in the 16:9 format, with the window not being dead center, but more to the right of the frame, allowing more sky/horizon to fill the frame on the left.

Thanks for your thoughts, it is a bit undersharp, but the saturation is due to the amazing light that day. I'm not sure how to fix the overexposure and still keep the colors. Ideas?
I need to start carrying my tripod with me everywhere I take the camera, so often I find myself wishing for it while it sits a hundred miles away at home. I spent two days showing a professional photographer around our field office for some PR shots and he never took a picture without using his tripod. NEVER. I'm a slow learner....

 

[photoman]

Based on recent discussions I thought this might be a good thread to bring back from the wasteland.


Who wants to critique the following?

ISO 200
7mm
F8
1/10 Shutter Speed
Shot at 10:30am


If you think you can process it better go ahead and grab it and then re-post your version along with details of what you did.


I kind of want to rework this shot myself but am interested in hearing others views and suggestions.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Based on recent discussions I thought this might be a good thread to bring back from the wasteland.


Who wants to critique the following?

I'll give it a shot Aaron if you don't mind.

First off, personally I think it's processed well. The luminosity levels as well as the colour both look very accurate me. The white balance is a little on the cool side and there is a bit of a blue colour cast lending itself to the scene which may or may not be your desired intention, it's certainly something you could play with to see if it changes the feeling of the scene for you.

As far as the image structure goes it's a bit too busy for me and there's no clear center of interest or flow to the scene. My eye keeps bouncing between the side lit tree at the top and the little leaves in the bottom but it does not do so fluidly,...if that makes sense. With the lighter toned elements framing the shot, ones eye tends to fall to the center darker heavier elements but when it gets there it does not find an appropriate center of interest. The darker pool of water in the middle is creating a void between the two main focus points of the scene.

The other issue I have is the scale of my assumed focus points don't quite fill enough of the frame. If the center of interest was the leaves in the bottom or the nicely side lit tree at the top it would've been nice to see them fill at least a 1/4 to 1/3 of the frame. As it stands now the tree and leaves are mearly very small elements within a big busy framing and are not receiving the attention they deserve. This looks like a very workable location though, and with your skill I'd say a return visit is in order.

 

[Lost Canadian]

I'm going to follow Aaron's lead. Here is one that never really felt quite all there for me. I juxtaposed two people walking with a no parking sign and dragged the shutter to imply movement but it never resonated loud enough to be much more than just a nice shot. I know what the biggest problem is, it's the light, it's flat and boring. Still, does anyone feel there is anything that can be done to save the shot?

 

[wskboarderx]

Sunrise in Canada

 

[nwoods]

Wakeboarder, I think this is a nice image. Perhaps HDR would have helped bring up the foreground a bit, or going the other direction, you can increase the black (using the sliders in Adobe Camera Raw) to make the boats pure silhouette. I would also clonestamp out the bird or buoy or whatever is floating in the middle of the image. I removed a bit of lens flare in the tree line too, then cropped it down to 1280px so that I could upload again (I no longer have my own webserver). These are all very minor adjustments, that didn't NEED to be done, but might help.

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

Still, does anyone feel there is anything that can be done to save the shot?

Sometimes if I have a shot that is just an 'OK' shot, I play around with the saturation alot. I'm not a big fan of shots that are totally saturated and manipulated to the extreme, but there are times when a simple shot can really make someone stop and look at it by just bumping up the sliders a few degrees from side to side.

Just my thoughts. If you havent downloaded a version of the Topaz Labs plug-in's, give them a try. They can take just about any shot and make it pop in one way or another. They offer a 30 day trial without embedding a watermark too. I dont know of anyone who has tried it out who hasnt bought the full version after the 30 day trial.

Brought into Topaz Labs Detail 4.0 and ran through the Portrait Drama Filter. Took about 1 minute to accomplish

 

[nwoods]

does anyone feel there is anything that can be done to save the shot?

I cropped it down two different ways, punched up the size a bit for effect (knowing that it degrades the images, but sorta provides some grain that I think is helpful in an overall sense, then I brightened up the middle, added a bit of contrast, then some lens vignetting around the corners. Better? I don't know. I really like the texture in the cobbles and the wall, and I like the motion blur of person #2, I played with motion blur settings for person #1 but didn't find a combination that looked natural so abandoned the effort.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Really appreciate it guys, sincerely. Although I think I may just let this image go,...what's that saying,..something about lipstick on a pig? .:sombrero:

 

[wskboarderx]

Wakeboarder, I think this is a nice image. Perhaps HDR would have helped bring up the foreground a bit, or going the other direction, you can increase the black (using the sliders in Adobe Camera Raw) to make the boats pure silhouette. I would also clonestamp out the bird or buoy or whatever is floating in the middle of the image. I removed a bit of lens flare in the tree line too, then cropped it down to 1280px so that I could upload again (I no longer have my own webserver). These are all very minor adjustments, that didn't NEED to be done, but might help.

Thanks for the feedback, I hardly ever photoshop my photographs however I might start fixing things such as the buoy. As for making the boats darker, I think that makes the picture look like more of a sun set than a sunrise. Both look good however. thanks for the tips.

 

[wskboarderx]

Also how can I make my photographs smaller when I post them?

 

[nwoods]

Also how can I make my photographs smaller when I post them?

Well....how are you getting them to 1600px and with a watermark? Probably just a minor variation of whatever you are doing now.

I use two different methods
1. Resize in Photoshop (or batch resize using Adobe Bridge, which uses Photoshop's processing engine)
2. Use SmugMug. Smug embeds the watermark on the fly, and provides scalable links in various sizes. Upload once in your largest anticipated size (or just post the original file), and then link in the appropriate size. Such as:

Small

Medium:

Large:

XL

X2

X3