First C & C...Help!

JessicaBlair · Oct 28, 2009

This is a photo I took on my honeymoon to Las Vegas...This was taken at the Hoover Dam! I just have a Kodak Z812 IS for now...looking to upgrade to something better

I will be posting more photo's later for more C & C Thanks
Jessica

JayCanon · Oct 28, 2009

Hi Jessica!
I think it's a good image that just needs a bit of cropping. That black object in the lower left corner needs to go. Also I think it would look better if you cropped a bit off the right side of the image. That will clean it up a bit and put more emphasis on the subject without taking anything away from what you captured in the image.

iolair · Oct 28, 2009

Hi Jessica, welcome to the forum! Thanks for showing me the hoover dam, I've never seen a picture of it before!

Composition
- The sky is just "plain" blue and there's not much happening on the right hand side of the picture. Zooming in a little more (or cropping the photo) could cut out the dull areas.

- The dam looks nice, but maybe there was someway to have added foreground interest to the photo too?

- I don't think the metal barrier near to us adds anything to the picture.

Technical
- The details on the dam don't look very sharp (it could just be the resized pic, I guess). If it's really too soft on the original, you could sharpen it a little in your image processing software. To take sharper photos, ask the camera not to use the widest aperture and check it's focused correctly - the autofocus sometimes misses. Also, it can help to support the camera on a steady object or tripod (and, if you have it, turn on image stabilisation) if it's not very bright light when you take the photo.

- Looks like the photo has some noise when I look at the sky and the carpark. You can smooth these areas in your image software. To prevent noise when you take the photo, make sure you use the lowest ISO number possible.

Hope this helps!