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Rudmin
Mar 31, 2009, 1:06 AM
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By this year, I mean '08.
This is partly just to show people my pictures and partly for people to rip them apart.
(This post was edited by Rudmin on Mar 31, 2009, 5:17 AM)
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braaaaaaaadley
Mar 31, 2009, 1:46 AM
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Your photo's are not terrible like your post implies. You simply need to get yourself some better subjects. This may involve you trying to see the world differently than you normally look at it.
Oh and the sky is overexposed in the climber guy photo
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pico23
Mar 31, 2009, 4:10 AM
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I agree with Braaadley on this.
It's actually IMO, less the subjects than the lighting.
You can photography a piece of dog poop in good lighting and make it interesting,
A lot of your shots seem to be mid day shots, and while not every photo can be taken an hour before or after sunset, some photos just suck (ok, wrong word, are unflattering to their subject) in mid day light.
One photo that stands out as a prime example of this, is the waterfall shot. Some people don't care for the ethereal effect of long exposures on water, but rarely does freezing the water work either. This is one with too much light, and too much contrast.
The powerlines in the cow shot kill it IMO. Otherwise, I don't find it all that bad a photo, actually kinda interesting.
The bike shot on the shoreline (#1) is pretty good. Good concept, Foreground is solid, although the shot looks about a stop overexposed. To me it's perhaps the best shot, besides the climbing shot.
The climbing shot could be awesome, I assume you shot it in JPEG, but lets say you shot it in RAW, I'd take the image, process it 2X once a .5 stop under, and once for the climber, and merge them. The lack of detail in the fog is a weak point, if you could pull a bit of detail back this is a good shot to me.
The beach shot looks fine to me.
Not sure I love the radio tower sunset. Again power lines,If you are going to have to put lines into the photo, try to make it work for the shot, make them lead into it. The other thing is it looks a bit overexposed, you only have a few options. To blend multiple shots, to expose for the shadows and blow out the highlights, or to go full silhouette and expose the highlights as mid tones.
Also, I was looking through your stream, and it seems like your camera tends to blow out highlights even on otherwise well exposed images.
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Myxomatosis
Mar 31, 2009, 4:24 AM
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Yeah the climber one is great  And what Pico said is also some strong advice. Your compostion is good, maybe need some foregrounds in a couple.
Photographing people can be hard, as most people hate there photo taken and make uptight faces and ends up coming out like crap.
But you really need to work on getting some emotion from the people (and even your landscapes). Its not an easy thing to do and even I struggle with it.
I know this is a cheesey line but ask yourself "Why am I taking this photo? What do I want to express?"
Even self critique your own photo's and work out what would have looked better.
Just from looking, and this is my eye and my style, so don't take it as advice, more what I would have done... Waterfall could have used some background, huge waterfall in the background there, could have been used better.
The horses.. I would have gotten closer to the horse so you can see into its eyes.
People looking right/waiting... two people waiting around? Chick looks like shes got an interesting "OMG im so bored" look about her... nice close up there might have worked better?
Beach... awesome
Bike and Greenlandscape..... ehhh... not feeling anything. To much bike?
Radiotower... ya its a real nice shot but the powerlines kinda kill it... other than that its good.
(the rest aren't coming up for me)
(This post was edited by Myxomatosis on Mar 31, 2009, 4:30 AM)
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marc801
Mar 31, 2009, 4:28 AM
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Why do you feel these are your best shots?
The links don't work for all the photos - there are 3 that are not found on the Google server.
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climbsomething
Mar 31, 2009, 4:39 AM
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I see what you're going for in some, but many of these pics suffer from poor lighting or distracting power lines. The climbing one, I'm sorry, might be the weakest of the bunch. My eye goes right to the most overexposed spot. Once I finally find the climber, he's underexposed and from what I can tell, not in a very compelling position.
The horse one would be your best shot if you cropped out the power lines in the foreground.
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blondgecko
Moderator
Mar 31, 2009, 5:24 AM
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What the others said about lighting, plus this: in just about every shot, I found myself wishing that it was just that little bit wider.
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ryanb
Mar 31, 2009, 5:37 AM
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Looks like you had a good year adventure wise.
Too my eye the two people with bikes and the climber shot are the best of the bunch. They are the two that make me wish i knew the rest of the story. If they were attached to articles I would read them.
My suggestions to you for this next year:
Concentrate on simplifying your compositions. Try to take pictures with a few strong lines or patterns in them and learn to pay attention to the sky and the edges of the frame. The bike one is excellent in this regard, it uses the lines of the buildings and road to create an energetic but subtle background that offsets the diagonal formed by the organic and circular forms in the foreground. A good designer would use the subjects off frame looks to direct the readers attention to the start of the article.
Study the work of photographers you admire and look at the tricks they use to control the background and focus your attention on the subject.
Take more control of your exposure. With a point and shoot this usually means exposing for the highlights or light colors and reframing with the button held down ...this give you the national geographic deep dark color, black shadows, no blown highlight look people expect from outdoor photographs (sometimes i cheat and set the camera to underexpose by .7). You can also do the opposite... expose for the shadows... but this is harder to pull off in color and only really works if any white bits are without detail and strongly separated from the rest of the shot...people don't like it when highlights are half blown like the mountains in your shot (why lots of shots taken in strong light are converted to black and white and tweaked to loose the highlights completely).
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Rudmin
Mar 31, 2009, 6:03 AM
Post #10 of 12
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Registered: Mar 29, 2009
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Thanks guys, I fixed the three broken links, or so I hope.
Here is the horse picture with the power lines cloned out. It's much less distracting and I didn't like cropping off the top of the hill.
If you are interested in the stories or places, I have just started working on writing down the story. It is still very much a work in progress and has lots more to be added:
http://cyclingnorthamerica.blogspot.com/
(This post was edited by Rudmin on Mar 31, 2009, 6:10 AM)
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Myxomatosis
Apr 1, 2009, 10:38 PM
Post #11 of 12
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The Gas station one is good probably your best in that style.
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rtwilli4
May 8, 2009, 6:33 PM
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Registered: Feb 14, 2008
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Nice job and some interesting subjects.
I think you could have gotten a better perspective in a few of these shots. The sunset on the beach: it looks like the sun was going down right over the ocean. You could have gotten the sun and also still had a silhouette of the rock in the foreground. The orange color on the left side of the picture just makes me go "hey, I wonder if the sunset was beautiful that day."
The one with the man on the ridge.... if you had gotten farther to the right, you could have gotten a silhouette of him against the sky and he would have stood out... it would have also given you a much deeper blue sky. Instead... you can barely see the man and the sky is just a pale blue.
The picture of the river in the valley... the road on the left kills it for me. Could you have moved and gotten a pic w/o the road?
I like the gas station one. I assume that it was a pretty empty road that you were on. What did the road look like? I would love to see an attempt to photograph those gas pumps from 10 or 15 meters down the road. This would give the viewer a perspective on how empty that road was, as you would be able to show how long and empty it was (or maybe it wasn't empty... I wasn't there).
The kids sitting on the bikes: where are they and what are they doing? Why are they there, what are they looking at? I would have liked to see a picture from directly behind them, showing what they are looking at... or from the street, showing where they are and what they are doing.
The radio tower sunset is good, but where is the sun? Could you have backed up a bit and gotten the whole tower instead of cutting off the top?
Cool Idea with the bike but I'm just not into it. I would have just taken the picture of the landscape, or at least gotten rid of the red bag. It's too bright and takes the eye instead of letting the viewer see the landscape.
I'm no photographer, I just know that when I take pictures I try a lot of different things and move around a lot. I'm willing to bet that there are a lot of shots that we haven't seen that may be better. Like someone said above... why do you think that these are your best? It's hard to emotionally detach yourself from pictures. Maybe some of them remind you of a moment that you liked. Remember, the viewer wasn't there.
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