bw CC, please

[Abby Rose]

Photoshoot with a friend today; it's super warm and the (pathetically small amount of) snow is all melting. Awesome. What a sad December this is.

I have a bunch more, but these are the ones I've processed. How could they have been better? :mrgreen:

#1. Not exactly the best photo, but it's cheerful. Is its cheerfulness enough of a redeeming quality to keep it? I'm not tall enough to get the angle that I wanted (camera was arms length above my head, here) and there was nothing I could find to stand on.


#2.



#3. First time I've stuck a black border on a photo. I just figured it out today. I'm not quite sure about it.

 

[ChevyBaby]

i love the first one! i love how you can see the footsteps where the words had been written. very simple yet i never thought of writing in the snow n takin a picture.

 

[AgentDrex]

#1
I agree, great concept...worth keeping IMO...

#2
Cool trunk

#3
not so much...try again...different composition...

 

[Abby Rose]

Thank you both for the comments!

Agent Drex, any recommendations on a different composition for #3? My reasoning behind this particular comp was to try and keep the entire pond in the frame, mostly. I experimented with not having the grass on the left in view, but I decided on this crop instead. Or should I have tried to stand in a different spot completely while taking the picture?

I'm surprised you both like #1. I was apparently standing on an angle to the platform thing that I didnt notice until I got the photo on my computer. I find it kind of displeasing. Also, I wasn't crazy about how the words ran right up to the edges of the frame. But hey, if neither of those things bugged you guys...

The all have significant burning and dodging. Obvious? Or not so much?

 

[KenC]

#1 - the top part is not that interesting, not as much as the foreground where the footprints are.

#2 - I love the texture and shape of the trunks. Try cropping a little on the left to get rid of some background and darken what's left to the trunks really stand out.

#3 is interesting, but something bothers me about it, possibly the lack of detail on the pond. Maybe it would have been better to get down lower and decrease the area occupied by the pond surface.

 

[GooniesNeverSayDie11]

#1 would be better with a little wider of a shot I think. The writing is crammed and I think more of the footprints would have been better also...

#2 doesn't really do anything for me. Neat trunk I guess.

#3 might have been better with a different angle, or by stepping back a little and zooming in to frame basically the same shot. I am guessing you were as wide as your camera would go? I think the result of having the foreground ( mainly the right block thing ) imposing in the shot takes away from the whole scene with the bench. Try to use focal length not only to fit stuff into your frame, but also for effect. Wide focal lengths help create depth and imposing foregrounds, and longer focal lengths can have the effect of compressing them. ( for example, if you had a crowd of people in a shopping mall and wanted to really give the crowded feeling, a longer focal length would make everyone seem much more cramped together. A wide angle may get a bigger shot and you may think "it will show more of the people" but it can also expose and exaggerate the space between the people and end up making it look less cramped than you are trying to convey. Make sense?

 

[Abby Rose]

#1 - the top part is not that interesting, not as much as the foreground where the footprints are.

Agree with you here. It'd be an awfully long and skinny picture if I cropped more of the top out, though. If I did that, could this be a candidate for a black top and bottom border, like I tried on the last one?

[quote="GooniesNeverSayDie11] Make sense? [/quote]

Yup! I like that explanation.

In #1, that was also as wide as my camera would go. :meh:

 

[KenC]

#1 - the top part is not that interesting, not as much as the foreground where the footprints are.

Agree with you here. It'd be an awfully long and skinny picture if I cropped more of the top out, though. If I did that, could this be a candidate for a black top and bottom border, like I tried on the last one?

It depends on what you want to do with it. If you want to print it, I think it would look strange with black borders on two sides, but maybe that's just me. For web display, it depends on the format. I posted some shots with a dark background on a site where they put the image in a black square, which pretty much merged with the background and made the image look distorted, so you have to know what to expect.

 

[jamesdavidboro]

I like no' 3:thumbup:

 

[white]

I think 3 is the best. The large stone in the foreground adds a lot. Good angle; good choice of focal length. In terms of composition, the left side is considerably weaker than the right side.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

#1 would have been better without the foot prints. No foot prints would have added some mystery as to how it was written.

#2 would benefit from framing it tighter, losing the useless background. It'd be much more interesting.

I think the last one is wonderful, and agree with white.

 

[Abby Rose]

For KenC and Bitter:

Better? Or should I take more off the sides?

edit: Ack, I swear it's not that out of focus on flickr or my computer screen! I'm going to go ahead and blame photobucket.

 

[KenC]

Yes, that is better, assuming you're right about photobucket softening it. There are a couple of areas on the left where you have a little bit of "halo" near the edges where it is a little lighter. You need to go in and really blow up those areas and adjust whatever you did to darken (you did use an adjustment layer, right?).

 

[mwcfarms]

I am not a fan of one. Sorry I found the foot prints distracting and think maybe the crop is off. Second is interesting curves and texture but I do really like three. The large stone leads me into the frame. I might try and burn in a bit of detail on the pond face or recover it with Lightroom 3.