These Seagulls Requested Some C&C

[AgentDrex]

Its not me man, asking for C&C is not my bag baby...
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#1

#2

 

[bazooka]

In my opinion:

The first is underexposed and is pretty boring. The light is flat and the birds sort of congeal into a big 'birdy blob' in the middle.

The second is better because it's an interesting composition... a pair top left, a pair bottom right... at first glance, it almost looks like they were cloned. I would crop it more horizontal. The undersides of the birds are underexposed while the sky is exposed correctly. Thus the sky competes for attention. The only thing you could have done to fix this would be to add some fill flash... even a bit of on camera flash would have been an improvement I think. Or you could nuke the on camera flash to darken the sky but I'm not sure if this would be more attractive making the on camera the key light.

 

[Derrel]

First shot is rendered too darkly, IMHO. The color appears rich,however. I like the way the lens used has drawn the image...it has an interesting look, lens-wise, but the subject matter is well, a birdy blob, as bazooka commented. The OOF band in the foreground bottom looks like either a slight hill, or fake DOF effects...looks unusual.

Second photo: looks like a very high shutter speed, with full stop-motion rendering. A more horizontal crop would improve it I think.

 

[AgentDrex]

#1 - Yup faked DOF look too...the bg was also faked...but I guess doesn't look as bad as the front...and yeah...even after tweaking it looks underexposed...the wing tips go into coal black...

#2
Here's a crop as suggested and attempted to bring the seagulls to a proper exposure level:

 

[AgentDrex]

Another edit for fun of photo number one:

 

[AgentDrex]

The lighting was pretty flat due to the severely overcast day....I think...maybe not...

 

[Neil S.]

I actually like both of these, especially #2.

They are both underexposed though...

 

[AgentDrex]

I still didn't fix it or something...I thought the edit looked better...my eyes must be going or something...it STILL looks underexposed????

 

[Overread]

Is your monitor calibrated? If not and your using an LCD screen chances are your backlight is set far too high (by default most LCD screens are very very bright) Turn down the backlight/brightness for now and put some funds toward getting something like a Spyder 3 screen clibrator. You need the hardware based options (like that one) because your eyes are subjective and "free online" options don't work.


Otherwise I would say you biggest problem with the first shot isn't techincal, but composition and content based. You've frozen the motion well and even caught a neat bit of wingsweep in one of the birds (the one breathing fire midair) however you've no subject as such. The birds are either flapping around something (but the viewer can't tell what) or milling around with no obvious concern - in the end its a shot with no leading lines or real focus for the viewer to land their eyes upon.