critique me please... pretty please

[ArmyofJuan]

Just wanna get some critique from the photo forum community. I'm not a professional and photography is a bobbie and just wanna see if i can get some pointers to improve my skills. These images are not edited and all were taken handheld with a Canon T4I with a 40mm F2.8 pancake lens. pretty much all were at an event what Improve NYC does around the city at times. first 2 were taken at the MP# experiment in July. The last one is a Yoga session in Time square. Any pointers are welcome and critique is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
1/2500 F3.2 iso -100
1/2500 F2.8 ISO-100
1/320 F2.8 ISO-100

 

[manaheim]

The first one is GREAT. I wish it were framed a little lower, but you've got a nice strong subject and the situation is quirky and the bubbles tie everyone together. Just GREAT.

The rest are meh. Subject isn't clear. My eyes wander all over the frame. I'm not sure what to look at. The second one has lots of dead pointless building in it.

Always ask yourself what you're taking a picture of. If you can't identify a single thing your eyes are drawn to, you're missing something. Ask yourself what, if anything, the picture says about the situation. Ask yourself where lines in the image lead your eyes and what that means to the viewer. Ask yourself if everything in the frame is contributing something to the image, or if it distracts from it.

But again... firs shot...awesome.

 

[Woodsman]

The first one is really good. I like the guy blowing bubbles. I think cropping out from left of him leaving him in front of the dark background behind him would be beneficial. Good DOF there with the blurred background.

The second I dont know what I would do there, maybe a different angle where the raised wall isnt angular and less people in front.

I like the third one but find the cut off legs of the woman in blue a bit distracting. Viewing the thumbnail scrolling on the page even cropping off the legs totally leaving just the dark skirt I think would work better as long as you could do it without cutting the feet off the woman in sneakers to the left. I would clone in a tad more of the woman in blues dark skirt to cover a smidgen more of ther legs then crop at the hemline.

Just my 2 cents worth (1 cent Canadian) for what its worth

 

[Ilovemycam]

They are OK. Doable
Try hyper real for the top one.

 

[ArmyofJuan]

Thx for the comments. I like the top one myself. For the second shot we were all frozen in a weird position for about a minute and i went with that idea. A lot of my photos is out of focus, what do you recommend?? Is it better for autofocus or manual cause so far i've been using manual focusing and it's been hard to get a clear shot.

 

[radiorickm]

#1 About Focusing: Most modern cameras, including your t4i, doesn't have the focusing screen for manual focus as supplied. Some use live view, with success, but it kills your battery very quickly. The best thing, is to learn how the auto-focus works, and let it do it's thing. Use the different modes, and select individual points as needed to get the sharp shots.

We often do things on purpose which seem counter productive, So I have to ask this: Why are you shooting at such a high shutter speed/large aperture? Is there something specific you are trying to do? At least in #2 and #3, they appear to be about the "group", so why set the depth of field to un-focus them. With the 40mm lens, you only need about 1/60 to avoid camera shake. So, what was your thinking on this?

This could be why you are getting so many not so clear shots.

Just curious.

 

[amolitor]

I like #1 for the same reasons everyone else does.

#3 is also potentially excellent. The woman in the foreground is either not isolated enough, or too isolated, though. More depth of field or less would have helped this. There are some other edits you could make to bring her out visually a bit, but as noted by others she's not quite strong enough visually to work well. It does work a lot better viewed big, though.

#2 is pretty much nuthin, though.

 

[sashbar]

I like the 2nd one. The contrast between the architectural order and people's randomness is great. First one is OK, but I would prefer a deep DoF here. 3rd is not interesting.

 

[ArmyofJuan]

#1 About Focusing: Most modern cameras, including your t4i, doesn't have the focusing screen for manual focus as supplied. Some use live view, with success, but it kills your battery very quickly. The best thing, is to learn how the auto-focus works, and let it do it's thing. Use the different modes, and select individual points as needed to get the sharp shots.

We often do things on purpose which seem counter productive, So I have to ask this: Why are you shooting at such a high shutter speed/large aperture? Is there something specific you are trying to do? At least in #2 and #3, they appear to be about the "group", so why set the depth of field to un-focus them. With the 40mm lens, you only need about 1/60 to avoid camera shake. So, what was your thinking on this?

This could be why you are getting so many not so clear shots.

Just curious.

I use the Aperature mode on the T4I and it just set the shutter to that setting. I dont use manual mode unless it is low light. I dunno if it is something wrong with the camera or the lighting that day but if i took the F stop too high the shutter speed gets real long. It wasn't intentional.... hehe

 

[ArmyofJuan]

I like #1 for the same reasons everyone else does.

#3 is also potentially excellent. The woman in the foreground is either not isolated enough, or too isolated, though. More depth of field or less would have helped this. There are some other edits you could make to bring her out visually a bit, but as noted by others she's not quite strong enough visually to work well. It does work a lot better viewed big, though.

#2 is pretty much nuthin, though.

I wanted to show that it was yoga at time square so didn't want to blurred out too much data in the background. and also shes pregnant and doing yoga, i find that pretty interesting. But def i will crop out some of the sides. That partial leg gotta go. thx

 

[radiorickm]

#1 About Focusing: Most modern cameras, including your t4i, doesn't have the focusing screen for manual focus as supplied. Some use live view, with success, but it kills your battery very quickly. The best thing, is to learn how the auto-focus works, and let it do it's thing. Use the different modes, and select individual points as needed to get the sharp shots.

We often do things on purpose which seem counter productive, So I have to ask this: Why are you shooting at such a high shutter speed/large aperture? Is there something specific you are trying to do? At least in #2 and #3, they appear to be about the "group", so why set the depth of field to un-focus them. With the 40mm lens, you only need about 1/60 to avoid camera shake. So, what was your thinking on this?

This could be why you are getting so many not so clear shots.

Just curious.

I use the Aperature mode on the T4I and it just set the shutter to that setting. I dont use manual mode unless it is low light. I dunno if it is something wrong with the camera or the lighting that day but if i took the F stop too high the shutter speed gets real long. It wasn't intentional.... hehe

Well see, here's the thing. IT WAS INTENTIONAL. When you take the camera out of program mode, you begin making choices that otherwise would be made by the in-camera computer. The choices you are making, in this case the aperture setting, has a profound effect on the picture. Until you are really clear about those choices, and how each and every one of them affects you pictures, you are going to get unreliable results.

I can (and I am going to catch hell for saying this) IMPROVE your photography 100% in 6 seconds. Turn on Auto-Focus, and put the camera back on the Green Square

UNTIL

You understand about the exposure triangle, and how it relates to depth of field.

Good luck and happy shooting

 

[play18now]

In reference to the third photo: I would have tried to get the largest depth of field possible. If you know that you can hold your camera steady up to a certain point, say 1/30th of a second, in Aperture Priority, adjust the aperture as far down until you get just shy of that 1/30th mark. That way you get the maximum depth of field. The background is a little too blown out for my taste. I understand where radiorickm is coming from in his suggestion of going back to green square. I would urge you to learn the exposure triangle first. Go to Canon's website and search for the Digital Learning Center. They have some very well done videos in there on the basics of composition.

 

[ArmyofJuan]

thank you for the advise, This is exactly the type of critique that i was looking for. I will definitely check out the canon website for the videos and update myself on the exposure triangle. I'll expect more critique when i post more photos.

 

[pgriz]

There are two parts to photography - the technical and the compositional. The technical covers exposure control, focus placement, light placement, and the like. When you use much more or much less DOF compared to the "standard" exposure, or much shorter or longer shutter speed (again compared to the "standard"), then you are starting to make creative choices with respect to which aspects you want to emphasize. Same goes for creative use of focus placement, deliberate choices to bias the exposure to the lighter or darker sides, which focal length to use, which filter(s) to use and so on.

The compositional aspects relate to what you point your camera at, from what height, including what background/foreground, and the placement/arrangement of the various elements in the frame. Combined with the judicious use of the technical elements, you get images where the technical complements the compositional. A big challenge of composition is to identify the "subject" and to decide how much separation you want between it and the foreground/background. A common problem is to use too much DOF and have the suject get lost in the foreground/background detail. That is the problem, in my opinion, of the third shot - lots and lots of detail and we're really not sure where to start looking. On the other hand, the first shot has a pretty clear main subject, and the DOF is sufficiently shallow to allow the background to be present, yet not compete with the main subject. As for the second shot - you'd need a lot of words to describe what is in the frame, and nothing really stands out distinctly. That is where you, the photographer, has to help us, the viewers, know what to look at by giving us the visual clues, as "This is sharp and bright, so look here first! Then follow the line to the next point, then circle around and come back to the main point!"

The "KIS" principle is a good one to keep in mind.

 

[ArmyofJuan]

There are two parts to photography - the technical and the compositional. The technical covers exposure control, focus placement, light placement, and the like. When you use much more or much less DOF compared to the "standard" exposure, or much shorter or longer shutter speed (again compared to the "standard"), then you are starting to make creative choices with respect to which aspects you want to emphasize. Same goes for creative use of focus placement, deliberate choices to bias the exposure to the lighter or darker sides, which focal length to use, which filter(s) to use and so on.

The compositional aspects relate to what you point your camera at, from what height, including what background/foreground, and the placement/arrangement of the various elements in the frame. Combined with the judicious use of the technical elements, you get images where the technical complements the compositional. A big challenge of composition is to identify the "subject" and to decide how much separation you want between it and the foreground/background. A common problem is to use too much DOF and have the suject get lost in the foreground/background detail. That is the problem, in my opinion, of the third shot - lots and lots of detail and we're really not sure where to start looking. On the other hand, the first shot has a pretty clear main subject, and the DOF is sufficiently shallow to allow the background to be present, yet not compete with the main subject. As for the second shot - you'd need a lot of words to describe what is in the frame, and nothing really stands out distinctly. That is where you, the photographer, has to help us, the viewers, know what to look at by giving us the visual clues, as "This is sharp and bright, so look here first! Then follow the line to the next point, then circle around and come back to the main point!"

The "KIS" principle is a good one to keep in mind.

i see where your going with this, I just have to focus more on the subject with the DOF. Without a clear subject, It doesn't really tell the viewers a subject and everything just gets lost in the background.