photo critique

chris21908 · Oct 28, 2008

here are 2 photos i took this month. the 1st one is of my little cousins, the 2nd one is at Zuma beach,Ca. please let me know what can be done to make these photos better.

DavidSR · Oct 28, 2008

You could have used a flash in the 1st to eliminate the shadows on their faces and straighten your horizon on the 2nd

..I don't think I've seen many landscape shots with tilted horizons.

blakklabelx · Oct 28, 2008

i dont know, i kinda like the tilted horizon.

DavidSR · Oct 28, 2008

Eh, to each their own..haha..personally I would have preferred the horizon straight.

skieur · Oct 28, 2008

On the photo of the girls, look at the closest girl on the right. Eyes are bright and clear with a hint of the colour and no distracting shadows on the face. That is perfect. The problem is that the same is not true for the other girls. When taking photos outside, watch for the problems created by shadows.

Some possibilities are change location, use flash to fill in the shadows, or use a reflector to direct light to fill the shadows.

In the beach shot, you got great texture in the foreground. The sun is overexposed and somewhat shapeless which is understandable but still a visual problem. A small aperture such as f22 or a neutral density filter might help solve this problem.

skieur

chris21908 · Nov 1, 2008

i really appreciate the tips! thanks!! as far as the shot of the kids, i didnt have my flash with me nor a reflector. this is one problem i knew i was going to have.

Photog · Nov 2, 2008

Yeah I agree, in the first my eye just keeps being drawn to the shadow on the middle girl's face. I don't like the angle on the second one, but apart from that it's quite nice. I think I spy some sensor dust up in the sky though.

Azriel · Nov 2, 2008

I really liked the second one. I think that's called a dutch tilt.

RyanMTaylor · Nov 2, 2008

I really like the 2nd one too. It gives me the feeling that the sunset might not be the focus, which is normally the case in sunset pictures. I'm more focused on the seaweed, even as bright as the sun. However I do agree that it's too bright and a filter could help it out.

As for the first one (working backwards now) I really like it but there's something really small about the composition that doesn't seem right to me. Head space seems good but that darn tree on the left keeps begging me to look at it. Also some kind of secondary bounce light would definitely help for toning down the shadows on their faces. I'm super new at this though so I'm not sure if using reflector cards and umbrellas is normal outdoors. I would say "whatever works and makes it look better" but again, I'm pretty unfamiliar with photography. That one bar of shadow from the horizontal post running across the middle girls face is also pretty distracting for me.

Having said that I really like both of the shots.