@creative-click-photography @daughterofhim97
Too bad I didn’t see that photo in time Kimberly! One problem that immediately jumps out at me is that you submitted a photo with a watermark. I much prefer if you submit photos without any type of destructive edits, as that makes my job a little easier!
Now to reveal the newest VersePic and the winner of the VPO!
Congradulations Caitlin! If you could please email me at [email protected] I’ll get your $5 reward off to you ASAP! You know, I really need to keep a list of the emails of winners so I don’t have to ask every time. 🙂
First, thank GOODNESS Caitlin submitted a DNG file via the DFR in addition to the JPEG on the forum! As you can see here, a “flat” JPEG file completely looses the highlights. The DNG file, however, had all of the highlight information and I was able to completely recover them! The many benifits of shooting in RAW… 😉
Before I get into the critique, I just want to say that I’m being honest here, and I may at times tend to be brutally so. Please take this critique in the way it was intended: to help you grow as a photographer!
Critique wise, one thing I like very much was how you figured out your shot. The small aperture in combination with having one foot in focus and close to the viewer gives a great illusion of depth and distance that I loved, and it provided the perfect out-of-focus non-distracting canvas for then verses! Additionally you perfectly captured all the detail in your DNG file with nothing blown out. This is something I constantly aim for. I can do a ridiculous amount in software adding and removing light and color from an image, but I can’t add that detail. You did a great job on that! Honestly I can’t think of anything else that I can say about the photo other than that I appreciated how you were able to explain why you took the photo, and that clarity of thought in the photo’s “story” comes through in the finished product.
As for your other photos Caitlin, I’ll be honest and say I had some difficulties opening the B&W photo of the girl running, so I’m completely going on the JPEG Preview embedded in the RAW file. First, I don’t see the Black and white doing anything for the image. You need to either have a significant color problem in your photo to remove all color or know that removing the color makes your photo look a lot better than in color. As I can’t see the original image, I’ll give you a pass on a lot of the issues here. Just to name a few of them: your black point is significantly higher than it should be, leading to some real issues with the hair and skirt becoming just a solid black. One other issue I draw is going to be personal preference, but the model (siblings are so useful!) feels… posed. To put it one way, it looks as if she isn’t moving. Her stance and arm placement in addition to the fact that none of her is blurred in motion makes me feel that if she is moving, she’s moving very slowly… Again, personal preference. I know people run like that, it’s just that you set up the shot to suggest movement, and the model doesn’t really mirror that, at least to me. A longer shutter speed to allow for some blur I feel would go a long way in enhancing the image.
One last critique, this time on the photos of your sister kneeling. The issue I find here is that of your composition and the angle you chose to shoot from. The problem comes from the fact that everything is off centered in these shots, and I can’t find a reason to justify why you did that. Your sister’s arms and body provide leading lines pointed at the sky, but when you follow those lines and look at the sky, the light source isn’t placed at the end of those lines. (You can really tell when I recover the highlights in the RAW files) This happens in both of your angles, and if you had taken your photos at a slightly different angle and placed your sister in the center of the shot, lining up the everything, it would go a long way to clarify what the photo is about, at least for me!
Abby, you submitted an interesting photo of your brother running at the sea. The advice I would offer you is to ALWAYS have a reason for your choices in your composition, and the composition is really the issue that I would point to in this shot. When your subject is in motion, the eye wants to see where it’s going, so we usually want to place the subject on one side of the photo and frame the shot so you have room for the subject to “move into”. You placed the subject right in the middle, and which left me a little confused as to whether I was supposed to look at the sea or the object in motion. Nothing is really happening in the right side of the photo, so it’s a distraction from your subject. You can fix this after the fact in software and even on you camera now, but your composition is something we all should be thinking about before we take a photo. I know I’m very guilty of this photography sin, so I’m preaching to myself here! Always think about your composition Ben!!! 🙂 Additionally, I don’t see the sky and horizon doing anything for the photo, so you could have completely ignored that they were there! By focusing on where your subject is going, you help the viewer understand what is happening. Usually. Sometimes breaking the “rules” of photography can create something really cool, so always pay attention to the rules, but know that you can break them. Sorry, I can get caught up in preaching to myself! 😉
I was excited to see someone new submit photos! I hope you continue to participate in the VersePic Opportunities Hannah Jones! First, thank you for submitting uncompressed NEF files via the DFR! I really appreciate it when people do that. I’ll be honest and just say that your photos weren’t quite what I was looking for, and I didn’t really find a way that I could see the verses in some of the photos… The sunset you submitted I felt was perfectly framed by the trees on the right, but the framing was disrupted on the left by the tree there. This isn’t a problem, and I’d probably just crop out everything to left of the tree to keep the framing consistent. The one problem I do have is that I tried cropping, but the tree is leaning toward the right and that complicated things… As you naturally expect to see trees standing straight up and all we see here is a silhouette, it makes me want to think that the whole photo is crooked and needs rotated… I know that there might be nothing that you could have done to prevent that, and it’s okay, but I thought I’d still mention it! One last thing: you have a big problem with color noise in the image. I’ll be perfectly honest and say I’m still figuring out how to shoot at night without having a boatload of noise join the party, so I’m not the person who could really tell you how to fix that… Maybe someone can leave Hannah (and me) some tips on that below? I will say since you have a silhouettes, noise is absolutely something I can deal with.
(Also, WELCOME TO AFFINITY PHOTO FOR THE IPAD!!! Well at least to their version of Adobe Camera Raw in the software anyway! More information likely to follow soon…)
Affinity got rid of the color noise already in the image, so you don’t see that in the before/after picutre, but it was there in a big way!
I think that was all the photos and critique I had……. I’ve been typing so long I’ve forgotten! Anyway, I look forward to bringing you another VPO sometime soon!
Be sure to check out our VersePics ministry at http://www.sharpeningcharacter.com/versepics. Also, shameless plug for the podcast: We’re running a very special contest celebrating our 75th episode of the Sharpening Character podcast and we’re giving a away as a prize something I designed that we know you’ll love! Catch up on the rules and everything else at http://www.sharpeningcharacter.com.
Thanks so much to all who submitted!
Ben
VersePic Director for Sharpening Character