Newbie - C & C wanted for people/street photography!

[inkybutton]

Hi all,
So I've been going with this photography thing for a month or two and I think I need some feedback. Please tell me what you think of my photos. (All taken with my Fujifilm Finepix F700)

1

Exposure: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/4.0

2

Exposure: 0.04 sec (1/25)
Aperture: f/5.6
Edited in GIMP to desaturate and increase contrast.

3

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/2.8
Edited in GIMP to desaturate and increase contrast.

All taken in Manual mode.

Thanks!

 

[iolair]

Number 1 does nothing for me.

Number 2 is great, I like it very much, and does the whole "picture telling a story" thing very nicely.

Number 3 looks pretty good to me. I think cropping the girls in portrait aspect would help, to cut out the stuff hanging on the door at left. The bright white face of the tiger grabs the attention more than the girls faces - though I'm not sure the best way to fix that. (If it was posed, though, you could reshoot it with them holding a dark coloured cushion instead - that would avoid the distraction and bring the area of maximum contrast - where your eyes are drawn to - back to the eyes of the girl on our right).

 

[bigtwinky]

I dont like the first one.
The horizon isn't level, the people aren't in focus, the archways have odd exposure, the one on the right is almost totally black, not enough of the building in the frame.

Two and three are nice shots. Two is fine, nice BW, interesting photo. 3 is too centered composed and lacks some interest.

 

[joeywpc]

#1 is flat, no contrast.
#2 has good contrast and highlights
#3 i agree it could be cropped better, study some professional work to see composition

 

[Dagwood56]

Well, for starters, your second 2 shots are candids, not street because they were taken indoors.

#1 this could have been a nice street shot had you composed it differently. It would have been better to have zoomed in on the guy sitting in the doorway on the left and made the shot about him. As is, the building draws most of the attention in the photo. Your subject is out of focus and the building is tilted.

#2is an alright candid, though in my opinion, the blown out top right corner is very distracting.

#3. This appears too posed to be a good candid shot, and the very bright white of the stuffed animal's face draws the eye right to that instead of the two girls.

Pick up a copies of Bryan Petersens books "Learning To See Creatively" and "Understanding Exposure" to help you with exposure and composition. You might also look into some Street photographers works {google street photography} to see the type of style, known as "street photography"

 

[inkybutton]

Hi guys!
Thank you for your comments.

@Dagwood,bigtwinky,joeywpc,iolair:

Thanks for pointing that out. I do know that only #1 is street so I should've put "Street/Candid" and not "Street/People".

#1:Good point, the people were OOF and horizons are tilted. Though I don't really want to zoom in on the woman (yes, it was a woman ) since I wanted to show a contrast between who's let in the church and who's not.
Do you know how to get the horizons right? 'Cause I've been having the same problem with a lot of photos I've taken.

Haha #3 was not posed. But yes, there was too much contrast on the tiger's face. Though I thought it's interesting how the tiger's happy face juxtaposed against the sad looks of the girls.

Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[bigtwinky]

For the horizons... my camera has multiple focus points in the viewfinder. I typically only use the center one to focus, but I often use the two at either horizontal extreme to help line up a shot.

If not, ther eis always post processing