B/W for critique

That last one has potential, great subject that could make for more than one good photograph. Try to take your time and see what you're looking at, spend some time looking thru the viewfinder and thinking about how you're framing photos and what you see in that rectangle.

The taller buildings to the right could make for an interesting photo, a vertical shot of those might be a possibility.

Try to watch your framing, there's an edge of a tree (I think) in the upper left corner, that would be better not in the photo. It takes some time and practice to get good at getting a proper exposure and knowing the technical aspects as well as the composition.
 
I got sidetracked when every video I watched said "get out of auto mode".
I don't know the impetus for making those videos, but I suspect that they assume people already know how to choose and frame a good composition, and just need to realize more creativity. Either that or they are simply stroking their own ego.
 
or they are simply stroking their own ego.[/QUOTE] Rather this. You know... freedom of the Internet.
Well, where is a will, there is a way. OP got first lesson: things are not working out right out of the bat. Now what ?
 
OK, so while I try to get better aquainted with bird photography I thought I'd submit one of my B/W's. I'm new to DSLR photography and this is from my third try using my camera. Critique away!


cement plant
by Sheila Swindell, on Flickr
this first image is better. Balanced/split frame/leading line with a intentional (seemingly) bi pass. It might potentially need a crop, but sending to print you would anyway and would have to play with it.
why everyone else in this thread thinks the other is better i honestly couldn't friggn tell you. Yes, learn your camera. Your second image lacks balance, foreground. Okay, but really a serious step down from the first. You could almost cut the first and make two photos of it. That is actually a pretty neat photo to come up with. The second, drop the foreground and crop, you could get it to balance. Basically separating the photo into a four square opposing eachother. The split frame idea i think i like better.
 
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What they said^^^

What is the center of interest?
Why is that tree taking up half the photo, and a tree line obscuring the buildings?

The first thing any viewer does is try to figure out what the photographer is wanting to show them - and I can't figure that out.
it isn't perfect, but i like when i see people shoot like this. To me it shows potential. Some frames are much harder to develop than just "here is the subject" which is photography 101. Albeit shooting a single subject to draw it out takes a lot of skill and talent. But as the frames get more complex, the more you have to break them down, the more abstract thinking gets pulled into a general landscape or city scape shot. My natural inclination when i don't see a clear subject is to next go to a. is it a general landscape or cityscape which usually doesn't require one. b. is it like many other shots of maybe a generalized street photo which photographers have been shooting for well over a hundred years or c. do i need to look at the frame and start breaking it down into abstract thinking and see how it fits together.
I generally don't look at any piece of art or a photo assuming it has to have a simple subject. Directing the eye, is a accomplishment, however there is something to be said for the type of work and the viewers ability to direct themselves. Sometimes i do think a photo is a lack of composition, other times, i believe it is a more complex kind of photo, or has a different purpose, that requires a different approach. That the photographer or artist intended, or just by natural inclination. I wouldn't have shot either of the above shots. But i probably would have came up with something close especially if i had spent some time right before that concentrating on abstracts. I don't believe in "there has to be a subject " premise in art. And for well over a hundred years photographers have been shooting general scenes without a simple subject. Literally, after a couple seconds of looking at these i started putting my hands over my computer screen and began breaking them down into basically quadrants and looking for balance.

just my thoughts. Not sure how you look at a photo i have a feeling you see it quite differently.
 
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What they said^^^

What is the center of interest?
Why is that tree taking up half the photo, and a tree line obscuring the buildings?

The first thing any viewer does is try to figure out what the photographer is wanting to show them - and I can't figure that out.
it isn't perfect, but i like when i see people shoot like this. To me it shows potential. Some frames are much harder to develop than just "here is the subject" which is photography 101. Albeit shooting a single subject to draw it out takes a lot of skill and talent. But as the frames get more complex, the more you have to break them down, the more abstract thinking gets pulled into a general landscape or city scape shot. My natural inclination when i don't see a clear subject is to next go to a. is it a general landscape or cityscape which usually doesn't require one. b. is it like many other shots of maybe a generalized street photo which photographers have been shooting for well over a hundred years or c. do i need to look at the frame and start breaking it down into abstract thinking and see how it fits together.
I generally don't look at any piece of art or a photo assuming it has to have a simple subject. Directing the eye, is a accomplishment, however there is something to be said for the type of work and the viewers ability to direct themselves. Sometimes i do think a photo is a lack of composition, other times, i believe it is a more complex kind of photo, or has a different purpose, that requires a different approach. That the photographer or artist intended, or just by natural inclination. I wouldn't have shot either of the above shots. But i probably would have came up with something close especially if i had spent some time right before that concentrating on abstracts. I don't believe in "there has to be a subject " premise in art. And for well over a hundred years photographers have been shooting general scenes without a simple subject. Literally, after a couple seconds of looking at these i started putting my hands over my computer screen and began breaking them down into basically quadrants and looking for balance.

just my thoughts. Not sure how you look at a photo i have a feeling you see it quite differently.

I definitely am not an abstract thinker so I never would have thought to break it down into quadrants. When I look at a picture I want to feel something that makes me want to search the rest of the picture to see what's there. This is a road that I travel every day to get to work. And depending on the season, it can either feel very lonely or extremely beautiful. The whole photo would be very deceptive to someone unfamiliar with the area because when I took it, everything looked out of place. I guess the angle I shot it at gives the impression that everything to the right of the photo is on the right side of the road but it isn't. It was just such a curiosity to me that I took the picture without thinking much about the framing (other than to block out the electrical stuff with the tree). After I took that one, I took a few of just the cement plant because I liked the look of the shadows when I looked at the first one.
 
What they said^^^

What is the center of interest?
Why is that tree taking up half the photo, and a tree line obscuring the buildings?

The first thing any viewer does is try to figure out what the photographer is wanting to show them - and I can't figure that out.
it isn't perfect, but i like when i see people shoot like this. To me it shows potential. Some frames are much harder to develop than just "here is the subject" which is photography 101. Albeit shooting a single subject to draw it out takes a lot of skill and talent. But as the frames get more complex, the more you have to break them down, the more abstract thinking gets pulled into a general landscape or city scape shot. My natural inclination when i don't see a clear subject is to next go to a. is it a general landscape or cityscape which usually doesn't require one. b. is it like many other shots of maybe a generalized street photo which photographers have been shooting for well over a hundred years or c. do i need to look at the frame and start breaking it down into abstract thinking and see how it fits together.
I generally don't look at any piece of art or a photo assuming it has to have a simple subject. Directing the eye, is a accomplishment, however there is something to be said for the type of work and the viewers ability to direct themselves. Sometimes i do think a photo is a lack of composition, other times, i believe it is a more complex kind of photo, or has a different purpose, that requires a different approach. That the photographer or artist intended, or just by natural inclination. I wouldn't have shot either of the above shots. But i probably would have came up with something close especially if i had spent some time right before that concentrating on abstracts. I don't believe in "there has to be a subject " premise in art. And for well over a hundred years photographers have been shooting general scenes without a simple subject. Literally, after a couple seconds of looking at these i started putting my hands over my computer screen and began breaking them down into basically quadrants and looking for balance.

just my thoughts. Not sure how you look at a photo i have a feeling you see it quite differently.

I definitely am not an abstract thinker so I never would have thought to break it down into quadrants. When I look at a picture I want to feel something that makes me want to search the rest of the picture to see what's there. This is a road that I travel every day to get to work. And depending on the season, it can either feel very lonely or extremely beautiful. The whole photo would be very deceptive to someone unfamiliar with the area because when I took it, everything looked out of place. I guess the angle I shot it at gives the impression that everything to the right of the photo is on the right side of the road but it isn't. It was just such a curiosity to me that I took the picture without thinking much about the framing (other than to block out the electrical stuff with the tree). After I took that one, I took a few of just the cement plant because I liked the look of the shadows when I looked at the first one.
summed up your reasoning right there. Nothing wrong with that. you'll get better.
 
bribrius said:
it isn't perfect, but i like when i see people shoot like this. To me it shows potential. Some frames are much harder to develop than just "here is the subject" which is photography 101. Albeit shooting a single subject to draw it out takes a lot of skill and talent. But as the frames get more complex, the more you have to break them down, the more abstract thinking gets pulled into a general landscape or city scape shot.

Making a good photo of something like a cement plant is challenging, especially if it is obscured by telephone wires,a road, a big leafy tree, and situated down in a dell, and far-away. My dad was actually in the sand and gravel business for a long time, and I've been to multiple cement plants in my life...they're all the same, and yet they are all a bit different, and NONE of them are all that photogenic. The way to develop a shot of a cement plant is to be able to get a good look at it, some place to shoot from, a decent vantage point. My suggestion, from the multiple industry magazines I've looked through? Formerly, balloons or helicopters were used for exciting images. Today, I'd go with a drone shot! But, lacking a drone, you need to get some way to literally show some of the plant. One option could be late or early in the day, with long,long shadows, and a low to the ground wide-angle look at something at least minimally exciting there, like maybe the crusher and its belt angling up, or some of the raw material piles and a front-end loader shown against nice, colored light from the sky...

You could go gritty, or go pretty. The biggest challenge from ground level in many places is that the places are BIG locations, and if you use a wide-angle lens, only the very closest stuff has any real size...the background stuff rapidlydrops off to nothing, size-wise....that was one reason I mentioned shooting late or early, to get loooooong shadows that will fill the foreground and almost, by dint of size drop-off, "point to" the stuff in the background.

You're kind of in the field of industrial photography with a cement plant; that's where you'll find pointers and ideas on how to shoot such places so they look at least minimally exciting.
 
bribrius said:
it isn't perfect, but i like when i see people shoot like this. To me it shows potential. Some frames are much harder to develop than just "here is the subject" which is photography 101. Albeit shooting a single subject to draw it out takes a lot of skill and talent. But as the frames get more complex, the more you have to break them down, the more abstract thinking gets pulled into a general landscape or city scape shot.

Making a good photo of something like a cement plant is challenging, especially if it is obscured by telephone wires,a road, a big leafy tree, and situated down in a dell, and far-away. My dad was actually in the sand and gravel business for a long time, and I've been to multiple cement plants in my life...they're all the same, and yet they are all a bit different, and NONE of them are all that photogenic. The way to develop a shot of a cement plant is to be able to get a good look at it, some place to shoot from, a decent vantage point. My suggestion, from the multiple industry magazines I've looked through? Formerly, balloons or helicopters were used for exciting images. Today, I'd go with a drone shot! But, lacking a drone, you need to get some way to literally show some of the plant. One option could be late or early in the day, with long,long shadows, and a low to the ground wide-angle look at something at least minimally exciting there, like maybe the crusher and its belt angling up, or some of the raw material piles and a front-end loader shown against nice, colored light from the sky...

You could go gritty, or go pretty. The biggest challenge from ground level in many places is that the places are BIG locations, and if you use a wide-angle lens, only the very closest stuff has any real size...the background stuff rapidlydrops off to nothing, size-wise....that was one reason I mentioned shooting late or early, to get loooooong shadows that will fill the foreground and almost, by dint of size drop-off, "point to" the stuff in the background.

You're kind of in the field of industrial photography with a cement plant; that's where you'll find pointers and ideas on how to shoot such places so they look at least minimally exciting.

Well, no no balloons or helicopters or drones, but I do have 2 legs. I will definitely have to find some other vantage points. Like you said its big, but there's not a lot of good places to get a shot unless you're back far enough which introduces things you don't want in the photo. I like the industrial feel to it. I also grew up around a cement plant. My dad worked there when the company didn't have a job on the highways to do. Now that I wish I could have gotten a picture of. Our school bus took a road that went straight through the middle of the plant. As we passed through, off to the right you could see gigantic cylinders that were red hot as they spun around. The town I live in now used to be huge on industry. Now there are just alot of abandoned buildings which would make great photos, but there are alot of wires and other junk in the way. Eventually I want to spend some time photographing as many as I can find. Only one thing I disagree with you on. Everything is photogenic, you just have to find the right way to look at it.
 

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