Opinions Needed

[jjmcd123]

Hello all!

I'm a newcomer here but I like to think (as I'm guessing we all do) that I have a natural eye for capturing images. I recently did a shoot for a production company and while they are happy with the production they haven't really given me detailed feedback.

If anyone could give me honest, brutal critique on my pictures I would be grateful. I'm looking for opinions on individual photos as well as the overall design of the slideshow video.

Specifically, I'd love to know whether I'm doing too much or too little in how expressive I'm being with the camera. That's a concern of mine at the moment.

 

[Watchful]

Not crazy about the music, did you write that yourself?
Also the images being a slideshow don't really make me want to watch this, add some pans and zooms to the video for a more dynamic feel and look.
The transitions, all being the same short crossfades, are boring, make longer fades to make the video feel more serene and less rushed, and some transitions of different types as well, but be careful not to turn it into a transition sampler video by overdoing them.

 

[jjmcd123]

I see, thanks, I'll think about those things in the future.

As for the photos themselves, what did you think?

 

[Watchful]

The pics were ok, but being all shot the same day and in overcast conditions made them feel flat. I'd go back several days and times to get a variety of conditions.

 

[table1349]

jjmce123, I like the photos. I think you have captured the essence of the Bunowen Castle area quite well. I have always wanted to visit the Dun Hill area. Personally I like the music quite well. If flows with the theme of the photos. I would agree that maybe a fade of some sort between the photos would be good.

 

[jjmcd123]

@gryphonslair99 oh wow are you familar with Connemara/Galway area?? I didn't expect anyone to be on this forum!!

And thank you for the feedback

 

[table1349]

Not really, Lived in Europe for 2 1/2 years and traveled extensively. My heritage is Scotch/Irish with a little German tossed in. West Meath is the county of my Irish ancestors. The Scottish ancestors hail from Loch Ness in the Lovet region. The German, only the good lord knows. We mostly visited the West Meath, Wexford & County Cork areas as well as Dublin of course. I have always wanted to go back and visit more of Ireland especially Donegal and the west coast areas. I hear they are stunningly beautiful.

 

[Didereaux]

You're really not going to get any decent critiques from the best photographers around here by posting slideshows....particularly really low res ones! What in the world were you thinking?

 

[jjmcd123]

@Didereaux how is 720p "low res" exactly?

And a fail to see how the photos coming up in a slideshow/ not being enormously high megapixles prevents the pictures from being viewed and the style of photography from being critiqued.

 

[kalgra]

I do see Didereaux's point. It is very difficult to critique these images in this format. There are several images that seem to be a bit soft or that focus was missed just slightly for example the closeup on the yellow flowers but I cant tell if that is the case or if its just the rendering of the video. Also its very difficult to offer feed back on specific images in this format. For example, one would have to count through the images as they are displayed to say I like image 17 or I do not like image 12 because of x,y,& z reasons. Or the person has to give a full description of what the image to identify which one they are referring to just to be able to say something like they feel a different crop or perspective would make some sort of difference. I dont think many people are going to go to that level of effort when there are so many images in that video to look through. If you had listed maybe a third of these images you would most liked critiqued as numbered items people would be much more willing to oblige.

All that said this is my feedback. Id like to preface my critique with I am not a professional and I have not been practicing photography for very long. So take my opinions and that exactly all they are, opinions with a grain salt.

Id like to start with I think a lot of these images are good and I really like some of them especially the more I look at them. In not going to specify which ones for the reasons I noted above. The biggest issue I have with many of these are simple composition. For example many of these images are not level with the horizon and this is very distracting to me and draws my attention away from the subject. Simply rotating the images slightly I think would over all make many of these more aesthetically pleasing and remove what I feel is unneeded/unwanted tension in the image. In a few examples you may have done this intentionally in others where I notice this Im willing to bet you did not.

Many of these images cut off portions of the subject in weird ways that I find distracting. For example in one image the sheep in the foreground has its hoofs cut off in a way that makes it feel incomplete and at the same time the sheep in the background has its head cut off. I feel this would have been a stronger image if a tighter crop of the foreground sheep was added to give it a stronger presence and would feel more intentional. As it is I find my eye wandering around the borders of the image trying to complete the other components that are missing and pulling my attention away from what you had intended. There are other example of just the rear end of a sheep cut off in the background. Again I feel this is distracting from the foreground subject and should have either been framed differently or cropped out entirely. I will also note there are several building images which have similar problems where just the tip of the building is cut off and it feels incomplete and unbalanced with the foreground. There is another example where there is some sort of indescribable blurry blob at the bottom of the frame that in my mind there is no question should have just been cropped out. That same image also suffers from too much foreground and not enough sky. I feel many of these images would have made a much stronger impact if you had just followed the rule of thirds when composing the shot and creating a better balance with the horizon. With that Ill also say I feel that there are several images I do like and these are almost all following the rule of thirds to some degree. However I cannot tell if it was intentional or not.

A question I have for you is are you doing any post processing? If I had to guess I would say no just based on what I feel regarding some of these images just needing to be tilted or cropped slightly. As someone else mentioned these images feel very flat and that is most likely due to the over cast skies. Hoever, I feel like most of these images would have benefited from a bit more contrast and color saturation and maybe even a bit of clarity added to the texture rich stone structures. In my opinion many of these images could have a much more dramatic impact simply by dropping the highlights and bringing up the shadow in post.


I will finish with again saying I do like a lot of these and find them very interesting. I dont mind the music and I think its fitting. Most of my pictures when I first started suffered many of the same problems and I never noticed them until more experienced photographers started pointing them out and I started to become much more aware of my composition and taking a little more time to see the shot through the camera. I really look forward to seeing more from you!

 

[table1349]

jjmcd123. I think you would have had better success with this if you had posted this in the video section. My comments were based on it as a video, and the overall impact of it as a video, not critiquing the photos used individually.

 

[jjmcd123]

@kalgra @kalgra thank you for such detailed, engaging and honest advice/feedback!

I never thought about the idea of how awkward it would be for viewers to critique the photos in video format until now.

I also appreciate the pointers you gave regarding the principle rules of photography. As someone new to the craft I prefere to work on my instinctive intuition as opposed to principles. I often find myself rebelling against rules of form throughout my other art (I am primarily a screenwriter). Although, having said that, it's always best to learn them (the rules) like an amateur and brake them like a pro.

One issue I have, and this is a wider question regarding photography - you mention faults within the images which could be cured using croping. If I crop an image wouldn't that alter the size of the file and thereby make it smaller than the rest of the photos and give the collection a disjointed look? Also, you mention how an adjustment to the colors in post would have a greater affect in shots that appear "flat". I took all the pictures in the natural lighting of the day and did no work to them in post: is alteration in post considered an "ethical" way to take photos? Isn't the point of photography to capture the true essence of the world, or is digital 21st century photography more akin to a painter? Where an artistic result is more important than reality? Have I stumbled into an ongoing artistic philosophical debate?

Overall, though, thank you for your time and engagement

 

[jjmcd123]

@gryphonslair99 ah, I wasn't aware of a video section. I think I may check it out.

 

[kalgra]

@kalgra @kalgra thank you for such detailed, engaging and honest advice/feedback!

I never thought about the idea of how awkward it would be for viewers to critique the photos in video format until now.

I also appreciate the pointers you gave regarding the principle rules of photography. As someone new to the craft I prefere to work on my instinctive intuition as opposed to principles. I often find myself rebelling against rules of form throughout my other art (I am primarily a screenwriter). Although, having said that, it's always best to learn them (the rules) like an amateur and brake them like a pro.

One issue I have, and this is a wider question regarding photography - you mention faults within the images which could be cured using croping. If I crop an image wouldn't that alter the size of the file and thereby make it smaller than the rest of the photos and give the collection a disjointed look? Also, you mention how an adjustment to the colors in post would have a greater affect in shots that appear "flat". I took all the pictures in the natural lighting of the day and did no work to them in post: is alteration in post considered an "ethical" way to take photos? Isn't the point of photography to capture the true essence of the world, or is digital 21st century photography more akin to a painter? Where an artistic result is more important than reality? Have I stumbled into an ongoing artistic philosophical debate?

Overall, though, thank you for your time and engagement

Yes if you crop the image it will lose some size and you will be throwing away some pixels so when ever possible its always best to frame the image the way you want it in camera. Thats what I meant by spending a little more time composing the shot. However if you are using a modern DSLR with 18-20MP resolution or even greater this still is not an issue due to how much the image is already compressed anyway. Others here might explain this better. Most cameras these days are so high in resolution that cropping is a luxury we all have. Sometimes when your in the moment and the picture needs to be spontaneous or is a child or dog running around the yard you dont have time to think about composing the shot as much. In this case it is helpful to crop the image in post. The image will still be scaled the same in most cases I believe unless you just crop the crap out of the thing. Here is an example. Same exact photo one with a huge crop and the other uncropped. Notice they still display at the same size. Sure I could not blow up the the cropped image as big for a print because of this and that what is often referred to by throwing away pixels.





I dont know any professional photographer that dosnt do some sort of editing in post. Generally speaking how is that any different than a film photographer developing a negative to his personal taste? A film photographer might use special tools to dodge and burn part of his print to bring out more details in the sky where as in digital I might use a graduated filter to increase or decrease exposure in certain areas to give the same effect. If you send a digital image to walmart for a print and they completely miss the white balance or tint in your photo but you still like the image anyway and hang it on your wall is that unethical?

I think you are getting into some real grey area when you say ethical. Ethics is subjective and while certain forms of photography might frown on altering a photo there is no reason ethics should ever dictate that all forms of photography should be exempt from editing. In my opinion post processing can be as important as taking the picture itself though sure some will disagree. If you are doing certain types of photo journalism I might see it but like I said very subjective. Lets take astro photography for example, Im no pro at it but as far as I know there is no way to capture most of the really good images that are out there in camera, Its a two part process where post editing is what really brings the image to life. If you are selling something and are editing the photo to misrepresent what a person is buying yes that in unethical.

For me photography is every bit as much about self expression as it is capturing a moment. I think really excellent photographers might be able to do this completely in camera sometimes but I think for most of us or at least in my case a lot of my self expression comes from the way I edit my photos. Some of your images seem to lack in dynamic range. This is not entirely your fault perhaps your camera donst have a really wide dynamic range and I bet if you were to take one of those images where the sky looks a little blown out and you could go back in time and stand where you did when you took that image and compare it to the real thing you might notice that even though the sky was overcast that there was still much more detail in the cloudy sky and in the shadows than you captured in your photograph. The human eye is capable of seeing things with way more dynamic range than any camera I know of so is it really wrong to bracket your shots and combine them into a single HDR image in post to capture the dramatic feeling or emotion you may have felt standing in such a beautiful place?

Im probably talking out my @$$ but this is just my perspective and my opinions. There are other here who possess more talent and knowledge than I will have so hopefully they will chime with some good feedback as well.

 

[kalgra]

Haha I guess I lied in this example they are different sizes. but I belive that is only because I cropped them at different ratios. If I cropped them while still keeping the same ratio of vertical and horizontal I don think they would have displayed differently See talking out my @$$.