Critique this picture, Please

[Clay Olmstead]

This is a shot of a runner who collapsed at the end of a marathon. I shot it at a slow shutter speed and cropped it tight to try to show the emotion of the scene, rather than recording the event as it happened. I'm not sure that it worked; any ideas on how it could be improved now, or could have been shot differently?

 

[Derrel]

I would use selective color in PS< or the HSL panel in Lightroom, and desaturate the orange of the one woman--her shirt is THE dominant element in the images. Same with the fellow in chartreuse shirt, as the #2 element. The fellow being helped is in darkness, and he sort of recedes into the woodwork, so to speak. I think allllll the other people need to be darkened, and then he needs to be brightened a bit.

 

[Clay Olmstead]

I would use selective color in PS< or the HSL panel in Lightroom, and desaturate the orange of the one woman--her shirt is THE dominant element in the images. Same with the fellow in chartreuse shirt, as the #2 element. The fellow being helped is in darkness, and he sort of recedes into the woodwork, so to speak. I think allllll the other people need to be darkened, and then he needs to be brightened a bit.

That makes sense. I had looked at taking it all the way down to black and white, but I think your answer is better.

 

[Designer]

You said "emotion", but there isn't any emotion showing in people's faces. Some urgency, yes, with all those people gathering round the one guy who fell, but a sense of urgency does not convey "emotion" in and of itself.

I like the motion blur, and I think you should try Derrel's suggestion.

 

[mmaria]

well, sorry... not working for me...

 

[sashbar]

This is more of an impressionist image rather than an "emotional" one. Blurred brightly coloured spaces create a picture that may seem eastetically pleasing, but there is clearly no intent, this is just an accidental misshot. Problem is, a technically bad shot very rarely can come up as a really interesting one. It happens once in a while due to sheer luck, but not often. I have had one such shot in the last three years. And this one, although bad is clearly not bad enough to become good, if you know what I mean.

 

[KenC]

Interesting in a good way. I'd follow Derrel's suggestion and also crop tighter on the left to match the other sides, like crop almost half of the person on the left.

 

[Clay Olmstead]

This is more of an impressionist image rather than an "emotional" one. Blurred brightly coloured spaces create a picture that may seem eastetically pleasing, but there is clearly no intent, this is just an accidental misshot. Problem is, a technically bad shot very rarely can come up as a really interesting one. It happens once in a while due to sheer luck, but not often. I have had one such shot in the last three years. And this one, although bad is clearly not bad enough to become good, if you know what I mean.

Actually, this was intentional. I had been doing a set of shots of the runners going by, blurring the runners or the background. When this runner fell, I left the shutter speed where it was rather than readjust it, which I thought about and had time to do.
I tried reducing the intensity of the colors, but they seem like a distraction no matter what, so I took it all the way down to black and white, with some local tone adjustments and a slight re-crop.

 

[Clay Olmstead]

Interesting in a good way. I'd follow Derrel's suggestion and also crop tighter on the left to match the other sides, like crop almost half of the person on the left.

I'll give that a shot.

 

[KmH]

It is not clear it is a marathon, and it is not clear he collasped due to fatigue.
For all we can tell from the photo he is a miscreant being subjected to 'street' justice.

IMO the blur and the crop makes the photography weaker rather than stronger.

 

[Designer]

It is not clear it is a marathon, and it is not clear he collasped due to fatigue.
For all we can tell from the photo he is a miscreant being subjected to 'street' justice.

 

[Clay Olmstead]

Thanks for the comments. It was an interesting experiment, and I learned a few things, so all in all a worthwhile exercise.