Photo Critique

The Roving Photographer Evaluates a Spiral Composition

For this photo critique, Issi from South Africa submitted "Spiral" from this flickr photo stream.

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"Spiral" Canon EOS 350D Digital @ 18mm, 1/60s, f/4, ISO 800 Roll your mouse over the image to see the original exposure INDEX - PREVIOUS CRITIQUE - NEXT CRITIQUE

A Photo Critique

• Composition
  
  This is a photo that grabs your attention right away! It has strong motion driven by the spiral, one of the most intriguing forms in nature.

  The mass of the foreground at bottom and right contrasts well with the middle ground of stairs and railing, all carrying your eye to the distant and dark background near image center.
  
  There are some more subtle concepts at work here, as well. The stairs in the middle ground introduce a sense of radial symmetry, as do the barely-visible steps in the background (the next floor below). The image also has many parallel spirals to reinforce the motion, from the inner stone edge to the top and bottom rails, and even the shadow of the railing.
  
  The 18mm focal length (I'm guessing about 29mm in 35mm terms) is wide enough that it creates interesting distortion in the foreground - it make take a while for you to recognize that the railing is a vertical system, rather than angled out into the stairway.
  
  
  
• Sharpness
  
  At first glance, this image has the feeling of good front-to-back sharpness. This is due to using the wide angle end of the 18-55mm zoom lens, which helps to give reasonably good depth of field . I say "reasonably" because the range of sharpness could be extended closer to the foreground by using a small aperture than f/4.
  
  On closer inspection, though, it is hard to know how well the foreground will hold up if printed at a size of even 10cm x 15cm. The image on Flickr was only 640 pixels wide, which makes depth of field hard to evaluate.
  
  While a little foreground blur is not objectionable, and even helps to separate foreground from middle ground, stopping down to f/8 or f/11 will assure a much greater depth.
  
  
  
• Exposure
  
  The strength of this image's exposure is that the original image captured a full range of brightness across red, green, and blue channels. This is important because it allowed for some basic adjustments to improve the clarity of the image. The image, as shown above, has had two adjustments. A white balance adjustment removed a yellow cast from the image, giving it a fresher look. A contrast enhancement darkened the shadows, giving crisper definition to edges and a stronger feeling of depth at the bottom of the spiral to give more punch to the image.
  
  Roll your mouse over the image to see the original exposure and see if you agree with these observations.
  
  The biggest challenge in this composition is seen in how the flash lights the stone in the foreground. This brightness dominates the picture and pulls the eye away from the all the exciting motion in the rest of the image.
  
  Two possible solutions here: 1) use off-camera flash held further away from the stone, or 2) use an advanced editor, like Photoshop, that allows masking or local dodging to reduce the brightness. Working with the flash position would likely give the best results if you had a chance to re-shoot the image.
  
  
  
• Summary
  
  Issi has submitted an eye-catching composition that draws the user in at first glance. While this photo critique indicates opportunity for improvement in sharpness and exposure technique, these are fine-tuning points intended to add punch to this strong composition.
  

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