Critique is nothing more than opinion. Don't feel intimidated to offer your opinion, it is what the photo makes you feel! Disecting a photo in pseudo-technical terms is just an avoidance of how the photo makes you FEEL! If you like it, you like it! Why may not matter, because only YOU will...
Rather than try to explain what isn't right about the shot, I thought I would give a shot at what I would have done if it had been mine...hope this doesn't offend.
Yes, you can do all that...but if you want to be a lumberjack, you don't first buy a saw mill. If you first learn how to see light, how to interpret what you see, and how to look for the places that kind of light exists, you learn what light is and why it is the only thing important in...
I've been a commercial photographer for roughly 45 years now...I'm retired, but still love to take photos. I've owned hundreds of thousands of $ in equipment, but I still subscribe to the old cliche..."It's not the arrow, it's the Indian". This portrait of an old friend was taken with less...
Let me understand this...you hate your own work? When you apply "hipsterish" filters to your photo, people love it! It seems that you have a bad case of ENVY for someone whose work you don't even like! If you spent half as much time promoting your work as you do shouting "LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT...