Festive folks

inneist · Jun 26, 2006

for the midsummer..

Please suggest what's possible for improvement. Thanks!

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AprilRamone · Jun 26, 2006

What I'm noticing right off the bat here is that you have chosen to not show any faces (save for the little girl in the first one, but in that shot her face has little specks of what she is eating, her mouth is full of food, and you have cut off the bottom part of her face)
Did you consciously make the decision to do that? And if so, why?

inneist · Jun 26, 2006

Hi, thanks for your response. I had several face pictures which didn't turn out successful or simply looked dull. So in the series I didn't include them, but when you mentioned this to me, I suddenly realised this really is the case. Regarding No. 1, it's a flop, you are right. More comments can I get from you? Thanks.

Alison · Jun 27, 2006

My suggestion would be to not crop quite so close. In several of the images elements of interest were half out of the photo, #1, 5, 6 & 7 stand out to me as images that may have been stronger with a wider point of view. That is something I learned over time and I now shoot for more of the scene. I think #8 is a good example of where you did that, you can see the entire girl in the frame where as in #6 she's cut off near her knees.

That said, overall the images have great color and good DOF.

inneist · Jun 27, 2006

Thanks Alison, I agree with you. The motivation of the cropping was mostly to leave out from the image what's not meant to be the main subject. I think the problem is that, when people's movement in such a situation tends to be unpredictable, it's difficult to compose it right before hand. So to crop it right hence largely becomes the recourse afterwards.

I confess shooting objects in motion is one of my weakest areas. Now I am more inclined to believe it's better to take a large stock of shots than waiting for the composition getting right on the spot.

AprilRamone · Jun 27, 2006

I agree with Alison also. I'm a big fan of getting in close too, but I have trained myself to realize that it's easier to crop down a little if you have to (although I try to compose what I want when I take the shot rather than do a ton of cropping later) than to not have enough of the shot later. Moving shots can be pretty difficult. When I was doing this Bat Mitvah earlier this month, I set about how much of the face I wanted in the shot and then sort of waited until the person moved into my frame and got what I wanted. I think it might just take practice.
A strong thing I am noticing about your shots is that they seem to have a good exposure and sometimes I find for myself that that is half the battle

inneist · Jun 27, 2006

Toda.

I ask an elementary question, what's the relationship between a good exposure and a right contrast, or is there a connection at all?. That day it was cloudy, so I raised the exposure level. However, I set the ISO at 80. I felt the contrasts aren't right here. In 2 and 3, for example, some light and dark parts are just warring with other. What do you think?

AprilRamone · Jun 28, 2006

Well, I am sure someone out there has a better explanation than me, but I basically think that it's good when you can have really dark darks and really white whites without blowing out the whites or losing too much detail in the shadow/dark areas. So, to me these pictures look like they are exposed well. I personally love when it's cloudy for picture taking just because I think it's easier to get a good exposure when faces are evenly lit. And because then I don't always have to move to the shade.
Perhaps just using a fill flash or fill of some sort would make picture taking on bright sunny days easier though?