Critique My Image

PB_PM

The tighter crop works a lot better than the pervious image! The brightness of the foreground and background are a little distracting, but not a big deal.

WestEndBoy

The tighter crop works a lot better than the pervious image! The brightness of the foreground and background are a little distracting, but not a big deal.

I will fix that when B&H gets off spring break. My light stands and reflectors are on "processing".

spraynpray

The look is more bleached out by too strong back light than 'high key' IMHO. Less exposure and a kiss of fill flash would have improved the contrast without running into noise problems when you bought the shadows up. I use the same lighting and have the same problems if it gets too bright. Sometimes shading the camera helps.

WestEndBoy

The look is more bleached out by too strong back light than 'high key' IMHO. Less exposure and a kiss of fill flash would have improved the contrast without running into noise problems when you bought the shadows up. I use the same lighting and have the same problems if it gets too bright. Sometimes shading the camera helps.

Thanks Spraynpray, I will work on that.

snakebunk

In the beginning of April I spent a whole day shooting cranes from a hide. I tried to do something different and came up with a couple of photographs in styles that are somewhat different from what I've tried before. I am interested to hear your opinions and any suggestions are welcome.

safyre

The look is more bleached out by too strong back light than 'high key' IMHO. Less exposure and a kiss of fill flash would have improved the contrast without running into noise problems when you bought the shadows up. I use the same lighting and have the same problems if it gets too bright. Sometimes shading the camera helps.

Thanks Spraynpray, I will work on that.

IMO, it really depends on the look that you're going for. Personally I'm a big fan of natural light, back lighting, sometimes washed out with a dreamy sort of look. These are the type of photos that are very popular right now in portraiture, weddings, fashion, even glamour. Not a fan of fill flash because it negates the amazing tones you get from natural light and having more contrast would lose of the feel of the photo. And even if there is noise, it's ok because it gives nice character to the photo. If I were to add any advice, try turning this into B&W as green is one of the harder colors to color grade (but I think you did a nice job of it).

mikep

been messing about with a watch again tonight. this was just sat on my desk with the lamp near it. photoshopped out the scratches on the glass too

elopez95

Thank you for all the kind words about this picture on flickr. I'm interested to know what you might have done differently. Also, I got this as an 8x10 gloss print from Walgreens and the picture was very dark. Is my picture simply too dark or was it a result of a low quality print?

michael66

Thank you for all the kind words about this picture on flickr. I'm interested to know what you might have done differently. Also, I got this as an 8x10 gloss print from Walgreens and the picture was very dark. Is my picture simply too dark or was it a result of a low quality print?

It is a great mother & child portrait. As for Walgreen's, they are fairly decent with snapshots, but I've found that the variations on the same picture can range to extremely washed out to very dark. Have a 4x6 printed and check the results. If that works out, take it back and have them re-do it. They seem to be pretty good about it.

mikep

how about this one then?! improving right?

spraynpray

@elopez95: Sometimes having the camera dead horizontal (making the horizon look wonky) isn't the best plan. I think your image would improve if you made the horizon horizontal as there are no real verticals to judge the horizon by.

Ade

@spraynpray

People are verticals I might leave the horizontal as is, otherwise mommy & baby will lean sideways.

@elopez95

Our eyes are attracted to bright things. There is a white patch on the foreground that is distracting from the subject. I might crop slightly closer to get rid of it. Very nice picture, by the way.

@mikep

Good capture! Partly you have the same problem with @elopez95: the highlights on top/bottom of the band is brighter vs. the highlights on the watch itself. You want the highlights to be on the face of the watch (which right now looks a bit flat or underexposed because the highlights are elsewhere)

Also generally you want to design lights so it looks like the object is lit from above. (It's a psychological thing as we're used to the sun) -- so the highlight on the bottom of the band is not useful. I would put max highlight around the 10 or 11 o'clock position.

Lastly there's some sort of halo around the watch which you might want to clean up. But you're 100% on the right track.

mikep

thanks for your advice ade

i was mimicking this picture :

i didnt make my halo obvious enough (but it does show up better on my pc, it seems to be dulled on flikr)

lighting from the top i find very hard, i cant yet find a top lit setup that works for these front on shots, this is lit from either side ...

ill try again next week

spraynpray

@Ade: I took that into consideration before I posted: they will not look as wrong as the horizon currently does IMHO. Maybe @elopez95 can re-crop it and post again so we can see?

Ade

@mikep

Oh I see the halo effect you're trying to achieve. Yeah it needs to be obvious, otherwise it looks like a mistake.

That RW picture is very well done. You can see all the highlights are on the face of the watch and the tones on the watch band are very controlled. You can also see from the hour and minute hands (and even from the shading from each hour mark) that the watch is lit as if from above and to the left.

Vipmediastar_JZ

when I saw @elopez95 photo the horizon didn't bother me. My attention went to the in focus mom and baby. I didn't notice it nor it did it bother me until it was mentioned. If I was doing a landscape while setting up the shot I would have made it level.

Just for my learning purposes why is it very critical that the horizon is level?
In comparison to the white spot in the bottom of the image.

Our eyes are attracted to bright things. There is a white patch on the foreground that is distracting from the subject. I might crop slightly closer to get rid of it. Very nice picture, by the way. - See more at: http://forum.nikonrumors.com/discussion/2324/critique-my-image#Item_339

That Part I understand and agree.
this is for an FYI for myself.

elopez95

Here you go! I can't tell which version I like more since the other one has already grown on me, but this certainly looks great. We were on a steep hill so by making the camera level I caused the horizon to look off. This is unrelated to the thread but I'm having a hard time setting my screen brightness for prints so any links to places that can help me out would be greatly appreciated. Or maybe even take this image and brighten it the way you would to print it and then I can compare the two (this one came out too dark when I printed it).

Ade

@elopez95

Monitors are usually set far too bright. And the ambient lighting level at home is usually too dim for evaluating pictures. These two factors conspire against you to create dark prints.

You have some options (not mutually exclusive):

- The easiest way is simply to brighten the entire image in whatever photo editor you are using before printing. The amount depends on your monitor setting & the ambient lighting level -- you can try test prints at 1 stop additional brightness and go from there. You'll quickly get a sense of how much you need to brighten an image before printing. Be sure not to accidentally "save" the image with this additional brightness applied unless you're using a 'non-destructive' editor (like Lightroom or Aperture).

- If you haven't calibrated your monitor, now might be the time to start. Hardware calibrators (e.g., Spyder, ColorMunki) let you consistently set the brightness of your monitor at a proper level. A brightness (luminance) level of 120 cd/m2 is a reasonable working value. However you will find that your prints might still come out a touch dark for the average room unless you view them in bright light (e.g., under a bright desk lamp). You can further reduce the brightness of the monitor (say under 100 cd/m2), or simply add a bit of brightness adjustment before printing as above, or raise the level of brightness in the room.

- If you're handy with Photoshop you can automate an action to make yourself a "contact sheet" with bracketed exposures for test printing. (Or maybe you can download such an action online somewhere for free). Here's an example using your picture:


Contact sheet for printing evaluation example

This way you can quickly evaluate how much you need to adjust the image by. You can throw in other types of bracketing such as color balance bracketing in the example above. Back in analog days we used to do contact sheets all the time, but I learned this trick for the digital world from Canadian photographer Victor Tavares.

tektrader

Here's one from the other day. I like it but have this feeling there's something not quite right.

Comments anyone?

michael66

Here you go! I can't tell which version I like more since the other one has already grown on me, but this certainly looks great. We were on a steep hill ...

Its kind of funny, but I do like this crop better. The horizon did not bother me as I got that it was on a slope. After reading the comments again and seeing this re-crop, I get it. I think the problem with have a slanting horizon, without having something in the picture to give it perspective, is that it simply looks crooked. Things like a fence or a building, would give your eyes a cue.

spraynpray

"After reading the comments again and seeing this re-crop, I get it. I think the problem with have a slanting horizon, without having something in the picture to give it perspective, is that it simply looks crooked. Things like a fence or a building, would give your eyes a cue."

Voila.

@elopez95: That's a really good shot now.

Msmoto

@tektrader

I like the idea, but have difficulty in understanding what you were photographing. And, this is a very tough subject. I might have used a wider lens, walked around and shot a lot of variations to find one with compositional features I liked. Some cropping of your image might be helpful. Or flipping right to left, plus cropping.… would have to see it. We read from left to right so the lines which go from left to right will get us to flow toward the point of interest. I will play with these things on the computer for a long time trying many different crops…. Good luck.

tektrader

Hmm, I think it needed a person in it for perspective and focus. I am thinking a model leaning back on the rail maybe

Might have to set up a shot there in the future........

Benji2505

Elopez: moving the POV up would have submersed the subjects into the yellow background and the subject would not have been cut off by the horizon.
Print: I use mpix and check the option "do not color correct", which usually gives accurate results.

dissent

I posted this one originally in PAD. Upon further review (as the saying goes) it seemed a bit flat -




So I tried two different ways to punch up the character of the shot. This first one is a simple increase of the exposure slider in Lightroom, with a little bit more contrast slider.




Then I tried again by increasing the whites slider instead of exposure, with the same bump up in added contrast.



I'd be interested to know what other sets of eyes think. Did I miss something? Am I still missing something?
Incidentally, before posting this I ColorMunki'd my monitor. It ended up cooling things down a bit, although the exposure level seemed to remain pretty much the same