My Work (Critique Appreciated)

west.photo · Sep 22, 2016

Hi, I'm new here and I hope I'm posting this in the right area, but I thought I'd share some of my work up to this point. I would love some critique on the work as a whole, although it doesn't have to be incredibly in-depth. I'd just like to know generally what's working and what I need to work on so that I can improve

I've only been doing photography seriously for a few months; all of these photos are from June or later. Any honest tips would be much appreciated!

Also, is there a good place to upload photos on this site? Is there an advantage to doing so?

Had focus issues on this one :/

SquarePeg · Sep 22, 2016

That third shot is great. It's interesting and his face has emotion. It's a very cool portrait. The other one of him with the sunglasses is ok but doesn't have the same impact. The others that have faces obscured or just seem to be documenting some type of stunt don't really have anything interesting about them to make me want to look again.

weepete · Sep 22, 2016

1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 are along the right lines IMO. Watch your framing, a few are too tight and some horizons are off.

I normally just upload to flickr and post the bb code.

HughGuessWho · Sep 22, 2016

I agree with SquarePeg's comments. I really think #3 is excellent, with nice, selective focus on the eye. All others...don't really do much for me.

PersistentNomad · Sep 22, 2016

Okay, normally I try not to be super harsh in my critiques, but I'm so disappointed in the bone photo. Probably because I love taking photos like this, and this just seems like such a missed opportunity. I think most of your other photos are interesting and compelling, but a few are areas where your idea could have been more fleshed out (smoke and sparklers) or in the painted face photo I would have deepened the DoF to get the actual eye-ball in better focus.

But, back to the bone photo.

What happened here?! I'm so confused about how green weeds both in front of and behind the bone are in focus, but almost none of the bone is in focus! The part of the bone that seems the furthest back is in focus, but the "centerpiece" of the bone (left arrow pointing at it) is totally out of focus. And because of where it's positioned in the photo, we're being told that it's the most important part, but all we can see is how out of focus it is.

In general, I think the composition is pretty great, but your cropping of it could have been better, particularly on the fake horizon of your light source (which I think is another sparkler). The top left corner has an even more unnatural look to it because it's so rigid compared to the rest of the bokeh edge, so I would either crop it out or clone it to be more cohesive. Also, the little mountain made by the light source's edge is cut off. If the shot had been a bit wider, it wouldn't look so awkward; there would have been a more fluid and interesting horizon. And, because it's distracting, I would clone out the little bit in the middle red circle at the top.

I used PS to try and adjust the horizon with the clone stamp and direct copy/paste drag and drops. Then, in the LR I went through and used the adjustment brush to fake the focus by bumping up (twice) the clarity and sharpness on the focal point of the bone, and then the brush again to knock back those two things on the grasses and the really in focus part of the bone. I did it on the bone to make it more uniform to where I tried to fake it.

It's still not great, but I think already it illustrates how it could have been a much better photo. (Actually, seeing it with this upload quality shows me that bumping the sharpness twice on the bone was WAY too much. In LR it doesn't look as pixelly, but I'm not going back.)