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Photo Critique
The Roving Photographer Evaluates Your Pictures
Jessy asked me to provide a photo critique for a set of her pictures after she saw my observations in Yahoo! Answers . She linked me to a varied set of images, with pictures from her home, as well as from vacations in Colorado and London, England. I've selected one of her Colorado shots that I thought was among her most promising.
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Sony DSC-P100, ISO 100, 1/200s, f5.6
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This is a well-composed photograph that features strong contrast of light and scale. The deep depth of field keeps the boulders in front in sharp focus while the background is equally in focus. The white of the background waterfall stands out from the shadows, and provides a directional line to bring the eye back to the foreground boulders. Finally, the shutter speed is slow enough that there is some blurring of the close water to let the viewer feel the motion of the water. |
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In the very foreground, at the bottom of the picture, the highlights are blown, meaning that they have become solid white with no detail. This is a small price to pay for the otherwise good dynamic range from the background shadows to the foreground boulders. The sky also is a bit washed out, which, like the foreground, is the tradeoff for getting good exposure for most of the rest of the image. |
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All this picture really needs is a bit of cropping to remove the worst of the blown highlights. As for the sky, a polarizing filter would have brought out more blue without impacting the exposure balance. I don't think the Sony DSC-P100 takes filters, so holding the lens of your sunglasses in front of the camera lens is an alternative worth trying.
For cropping, here are a few options.
Option 1
This is a proportional crop, keeping the same aspect ratio, (2.35:3) as the original.
It retains as much of the original image as possible, with most of the removal coming from the overexposed bottom (which was the primary driver for the crop) and the right.
Option 2
In this version, I went for the golden ratio, preferring to accentuate the vertical nature of the scene. To do that, I sacrificed the boulders on the left because I thought it important to keep the water flowing around the right side of the boulder in front.
Option 3
After looking at the two options above, I still wasn't satisfied that I was giving the best direction - the sky blending into the white background was still bothering me. So, I tried a square crop.
This is the clear winner, for my taste. Without the sky and the distracting foreground brightness, there is a feeling of being inside the image, rather than looking from the outside. The eye is free to follow the water in its natural flow from foreground to background and back again. Well, maybe that's backwards, but my eye starts in the foreground and moves upstream, first. Do you see it differently? |
Thanks to Jessy for supporting this photo critique. If you'd like to see more of her pictures, as well as a larger-sized version of this one, click here.
As with all photo critiques, these comments are mostly subjective. While based on years of experience, please take them as one-man's opinion and use them where you think they will help the most.
Cheers,
Ted
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