@theodore
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@dilip tilak, welcome to the Lenspiration community! If you want to submit your photo for critique you may do so by reading the Lenspiration Critique Forum guidelines post listed at the top of the critique forum entries, and then create your own entry by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and entering your photo and text there. That way replies to each post are not distracting or confusing.
- This reply was modified 56 years, 7 months ago by .
With my sister currently in EMS academy training for AEMT certification and responding on clinical ride-outs to interstate highway vehicle accidents and Heroin overdoses, the fifth photo would be a win even if it weren’t composed as well as it is. I admire how well the falling sparks were captured…I have to admit I usually get that effect only by accident when my lens is dirty. 😛
@elianafranzenburg Having grown up in southern Minnesota, I understand how hard it can be to find anything other than dandelions this time of year :/ . Another thought I had was laying six roses on a hand mirror in a window lit room with beige or taupe walls for a shot that would work well as the cover of a wedding card.
One of the first things I notice when I see this photo is not all the flowers in the bunch are in focus, but with how many there are and each at a different distance from the camera it’s practically impossible to get them all clearly defined. Because of that, I personally find it hard to distinguish between the flowers and their reflections. Sooo….an idea I had was use the same composition and intriguing mirror effect since those are both awesome, but use a bunch of tulips, roses, or any other flower that would be more uniform and easier to align and bring into focus. You could also lay the flowers on a piece of embroidery or lace to bring more clarity to what’s a reflection and what isn’t, similar to how the bank of a river forms a border between the forest on the water’s edge and the reflections below.
Hopefully, this all makes sense:P. I am in no way saying you did anything ‘wrong’ or poorly-I think you did a great job of composing the shot, but it might be easier to use a bunch of flowers that didn’t require focus stacking or some other method of deepening the DOF.For my part, I’ve always found that the human eye can’t focus on two different objects at the same depth very easily so it picks one or the other. In other words, when looking at a pair of eyes one usually focuses on one or the other, or their eyes dart indecisively between the two but that usually only happens in well acted interrogation scenes from movies. That being said, if you want to bring more definition to the darker and more blurry side of the amphibian’s face so the entire face is the subject and both eyes are equally exposed, definitely remove the vignette. However, I think you did the photo better justice by accentuating the darkness on the right hand side with the vignette, thus bringing more focus to what’s already the first thing someone notices when they see the photo-the mysterious eye in the center of the image.
That makes a lot of sense! I’ve noticed on previous shots that whiskers and eyebrows seem to disappear when the image is underexposed…I never thought to overexpose the image so there’s plenty of light to work with, though.
My default ISO setting is 100, and I usually never take it above 400. I think what happened is I tried using aperture value (which I almost never use) and I sent the ISO through the roof to make sure the image wouldn’t be blurry due to cat or camera movement. I don’t think I’ve been able to use a flash very effectively unless it was behind a diffuser..correcting the glare on an animal’s eyes is not my forte either. On one occasion, I was using a 5D and didn’t have the option of a pop-up flash so I bounced the beam from an EDC flashlight off the wall of the dark staircase and achieved the necessary light that way.I already had Photoshop in front of me so I thought to send your shot for a 60-second whirl and came up with this. I could have given it more time to play with the vignette but it seems to to visualize the B&W concept as intended.
- This reply was modified 56 years, 7 months ago by .
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Composing a nature shot using the rule of thirds can help bring more distinction between the foreground and background, but it’s very possible to center the flower and have the same clarity of focus. Although it’s a ‘must use’ for many shots of people’s faces or filming interviews,I don’t capture every shot I take using the rule of thirds because sometimes the background or lighting look better with a centered subject. In this case, I probably would have kept the flower centered in frame but would have tried to catch more flowers or skyline in the background by shooting from a lower angle and gently bending the zinnia forward so it still faces the camera. From previous experiences with zinnias, I’ve never been able to capture all the detail of the petals and stamens by shooting at them sideways, like in the attached photo.
- This reply was modified 56 years, 7 months ago by .
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@loganlamar, in your last reply to this assignment did you intend to suggest a contest of sorts between us “lenspirationers” to see who could produce the best photo with a Scripture verse added? If so, I think it’s a great idea.(Especially because I have a few photos of the sort hibernating on backup drives that I haven’t done much with 😛 .)
Personally, I think you handled the overexposure and lack of vibrance in the original image very well. The mist in the upper third of the image acts as a vignette or gradient fill layer to make that portion of the image more ‘boring’, for lack of a better word which helps to draw one’s eye to the branch. I don’t see anything wrong with the amount of ‘dead space’ in the shot. It lacks clarity or focus (which a background usually should) but it has enough texture to add some depth to the image. Crop the mist and mountains out or shoot from a higher angle and all you would be left with is a dead branch lying in dead-looking grass and you would lose some of the detail in the shot without making the subject any more defined. I do think that the portion of the branch that extends into the upper left corner forms a lead-out line, but it also forms an intriguing ‘V’ with the mountain in the background. The contrast isn’t too high in my opinion; it actually brings out more of the detail in the branch.I believe the image captures the mood of a stormy day well…converting it to B&W and adding a vignette would make it more gloomy, if that effect was desired.
I haven’t had time to take a better shot but I did snap this one a few days ago with my brother.
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I tried several angles on this file and rusty blade, as well as several needle files but only a few shots worked out.
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Personally, I think the frame of the bridge window on the left side would accent the image if it was on the right also and framed the image on two sides, but being only on one side it seems to distract from the web. I tried cropping your photo and placing the center of the web using the ‘rule of thirds’, which removes the framework on the left side but in my mind brings more attention to the river, which could be a subject on its own.
Overall, I think the image captures the web very well,even though the composition isn’t exactly perfect or obeying all the rules of composition. Sometimes opportunity presents itself but we’re limited in how we can take advantage of it by the gear (or lack thereof) that we have on hand.
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Thanks for the critique! Because I was shooting from the opposite side of the flower bed using only 70mm focal length on an open frame sensor I couldn’t get the shot as tight as I usually would. My first choice would have been my 70D with an 18-135mm lens which is what I usually use as an all around camera setup but that camera was still packed away in one of my backpacks so I grabbed the 5D instead. In hindsight, I should’ve gotten a better camera for the shot and gotten the image a lot tighter so I wouldn’t lose any data in cropping away most of the photo to remove the distracting ‘lead-out’ lines.
