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I have a different response and prefer Crop 1. For me, Crop 2 seems a little dull in comparison. I might not feel that way if I saw only Crop 2, but having seen both, Crop 1 just seems to have a bit more drama with the flare on the right. Also, the left side of the photo has a somewhat, to my eye, strange “spotty” effect from the white windows sprinkled around the black buildings. Crop 1 diminishes that effect by removing some of the buildings on the left while Crop 2 does not. I do agree though that a little bit off the bottom works well.
Haven’t been here for quite some times. Apologies for coming in late on the comments, especially since Erik has already said he prefers Crop 2.
Or maybe he’s checking the water temperature. Cold water? Not good!
This is a really beautiful shot. Love it!
One more. (And another shot in Punta Gorda.)
A minimalistic silhouette photo:
I keep thinking that I don’t do silhouettes but when I looked through photos I have posted online, I discovered that I actually have quite a few–they’re just not all dramatic sunset shots! Here’s one I like where the silhouettes provide a frame for the subject. I have a couple of others, but I can’t figure out how to upload more than one photo in the same post.
My question is what is the subject of this photo. My response to that kind of question is usually something along the lines of that the “scene” is the subject. But the problem I have here is that to my eye there are two subjects and they are competing with each other. The first is the birds and the second is the seascape. Perhaps the problem is caused by the fact that the birds are so bright and sharp–especially that gull–against the dark sand that my eye keeps getting drawn to them and at the same time my eye is also drawn to the lovely seascape behind them. While the seascape is not as bright as the birds, it takes up a lot of the photo and has interest on both sides.While looking at the photo on Flickr, I zoomed in and on my screen the photo was cut off a bit at the bottom (I could get it back by moving the photo). So I tried cropping the photo at the bottom to just below the second footprint up, some on both sides (more on the left), and a tiny bit at the top makes the birds the clear subject of the photo, and it seems to work better for me. Perhaps that changes the panoramic nature of the photo too much, though, for what you were trying to achieve.
Don’t know how to upload my suggested revised photo.
Jumping back up to the original photo and bucsweet’s suggested edits–I’m impressed. For me the original photo was mildly interesting but too jumbled and busy. I like all three of those crops. Thanks for a good tutorial.
This is a lovely photo of a beautiful little girl, and Erik’s adjustments really took it up several notches. Good advice, too, about preparation to keep in mind. One thing that jumped out at me–actually more in Erik’s version than in the original, although when I checked it was actually more evident in the original–was the decidedly yellow tone to her skin under her lower lip. Is there a way to correct it? Or am I the only one bothered by that?
Interesting looking guy and the photo is eye catching, but for me it has a few problems. Does he really have such dark skin or did you deliberately darken it to play up the contrast? He looks to me like someone with a very, very dark suntan, the kind that eventually turns skin leathery. (My husband happened to spot the photo on my desktop screen from about 10 feet away and asked if he was Indian–as in native American.) Also, the photo seems to hover somewhat awkwardly between a posed portrait (think annual report) and a candid shot. I agree, too, with those who mention the solid black background–the lack of any objects or sense of light adds to the portrait, rather than candid, feel.
Of course, having said that, I can only wish I could get a candid anywhere near as good. I think maybe the problems that bother me lie more in PP than in the actual shot.
Yes, the middle of the road is definitely humped. I never thought about why, but now that you mention it, I agree that it’s wheel ruts. I need to go back and look at the old plat maps to see how long this road has been there. The fact that it’s brick tells me it’s fairly old, but then, again, it was probably originally just dirt. There are still a few other brick streets in the neighborhood, but they’re disappearing one by one as something happens that requires a major dig–for smaller repair jobs they do put the bricks back. I think they’re attractive and hate to see them go. The couple of cobblestone ones, OTOH, can’t disappear soon enough for me. They look lovely but are horrid to drive on.
It looks to me, too, like the alley rises again as it approaches the edge, but I’m not positive; I’ll look when I go back. There’s actually a bit of grade to this alley, not as much as with many of the streets around me, but definitely a grade. I don’t know if I can estimate how many degrees; maybe my husband with his engineering bent can.
I tried softening the light as you suggested and the result is in the two B&W photos I posted below. I think you were right. As for the clouds–with the two crops I did, it’s a moot question, I think, but before I posted the photo above, I tried my hardest to get the clouds that show in the color photo into this B&W but no matter what I did, I could not get them visible. They are almost invisible in the out of camera shot.
So many suggestions! This has been a really fascinating exercise for me, so thank you everyone. I’m posting four more versions, two B&W, two color, that incorporate most of the suggestions. They could, perhaps, have been done a bit more carefully, but I wanted to get them done and posted but I’m going to be out for the rest of the day. I think they work to a large extent and I actually like all four of them. They certainly are an improvement over the original in any case. The two that are severely cropped have, of course, had a sharp drop in, well, sharpness because they are now such a tiny fraction of the original image. I think the two “close-ups” and the two “distance” shots have a very different feel to them but are both photos I like. I think I need to go back to the alley–luckily it’s only a few blocks from my house–to try a number of different POVs (including having my husband lie in the street–no, no, just kidding–but maybe his bike. And I wonder if I can borrow a dog.) I would still love to hear what you all think.
Wonderful photos submitted. Nice to see so many different examples of repetition and patterns. Here are two more from me:
So many to choose from!
What I find troublesome as the viewer is that there is just too much going on. I really like the image of the guy leaning against the wall but I keep getting distracted by the mechanisms at the bottom of the photo. I tried faux-cropping (by sliding the picture down on my screen) so that it is cut off at the bottom of the black “bar” that runs across the photo. That, for me, makes it much better. Cropping to the black band at the bottom of the orange-y panels also works, I think, and leaves a bit more sense of place intact.
People have suggested crops to me that I thought “destroyed” the context of the photo, that is, what they suggested cropping out was what I thought gave the photo a sense of place or that somehow “explained” the photo. I resisted. But then I tried it, and I’ve discovered that I really need to think about exactly what it is I want to say with my photo. Does keeping some part or parts of the surrounding area really enhance the photo or does it detract from it? Now, if I’m preparing a photo to share as some sort of artistic expression of my own, I want to make it the strongest photo possible, and that may mean cropping out something I think is interesting or important–but that in reality doesn’t add anything to the photo for the viewer. The uncropped photo may still be valuable as the capture of a memory for me personally or as a documentary photo, but the stronger “artistic” photo may benefit from less is more.
Try playing around with it and see if you can find a way to make it stop bugging you. I think it could be a really, really good photo.
Erik – I think there is a big difference between making a dismissive comment like “It’s a snapshot. Great for the family album.” and what you just did in this comment where you made constructive and specific suggestions for moving to another level. Would your suggestions work to make the photo better? Perhaps. But without any suggestions, I think most of us amateurs are left scratching our heads. After all, this is his vision as a photographer, but it’s not working for someone (or someones). With suggestions, one can consider whether or not a different way of approaching the photograph would produce a better result. Without suggestions, one is left at a loss.
Personally, I like the second version of the photo in spite of the fact that it still has a few flaws (the man in the lower left corner and the awkward crop at the bottom.) I like the tourists wandering around, and I like the color of the columns. Now, could it be a yet better photograph? Technically? Yes. In terms of “vision”? Probably.
We’re here to learn and the criticism is supposed to be constructive. Comments that do not provide any learning experience are, IMO, worthless. No, they’re worse than that. They’re discouraging. How many people have participated here and then left because they were treated dismissively–or at least in a way that felt dismissive to them? When I get negative but constructive criticism, I learn something whether or not I ultimately agree with the comment. That should be the goal. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.
I think the question of whether or not something is “interesting” enough for a photo is a surprisingly tricky one. It seems to me that there a number of things that go into deciding whether or not the subject and/or the resulting photo is interesting. One’s personal taste and appreciation for the category the photo falls into. The skill with which the photo is executed. Originality or the lack thereof. Probably some other things.
I often like to photograph things that I think are interesting in some way but that I suspect most people would not notice or that they would dismiss if they did. What I want to do is create a photo that conveys to others what I saw that made it interesting to me. Sometimes it works; sometimes the photo totally fails to capture what it was I saw. As I’ve gained more experience, I’ve learned that some things just do not photograph well (at least not for someone at my skill level), and so I no longer bother to try (even though I may be tempted.) Sometimes I post a photo that I’m convinced no one will appreciate but I post it anyway because I like what it says, and I’m surprised that it gets an appreciative reaction. Other times, I post something that I figure people will really like…and they don’t.
The alley in this photo is one of those little things that I find interesting, but the photo I got wasn’t what I had hoped for. OTOH, I didn’t think it was terrible. I kept trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. Was there a way to improve it, to make it more interesting? Why didn’t it work? That’s why I posted it here.
I think the suggestions I received helped me learn quite a bit about how to improve a photograph in general, and to a degree made the photo more successful and somewhat more interesting–certainly nothing earth shaking, but worth a look. I tend to think that Lenny’s suggestion of a subject to hold the eye could make a real difference, but I haven’t been able to try that idea out yet. His suggestion reminded me of a somewhat similar photo I took a few years ago; I patiently (well, impatiently) waited for the stupid guy on the bike to get out of my lovely composition and, having done one photo with the bike rider in it, I proceeded to take several more when he finally moved on and out of the picture. Of course, the photo with him in it was the only really worthwhile one.
Okay, a very long-winded way of saying that I grapple with the issue of what is interesting. And what is not. Not just for my own photographs but when I look at others. Somehow, some photos just are not interesting To anyone. Sometimes not even to the photographer. While others, well…it all depends. But I guess the problem for me is that a comment that a photo is not interesting is sort of a useless comment unless it’s accompanied by a suggestion for what might make it interesting. Otherwise, it may well be that it is uninteresting to the person commenting, but not to everyone.
Why does taking a photo of another artist’s work necessarily require “our photographic vision of it” any more than taking a photo of a sunset or of a mountain or a dilapidated barn on the prairie? What is wrong with a well-done, straight-forward photo that captures what something actually looks like at a particular moment in time? Dan’s photo isn’t perfect, but IMO saying it is nothing more than a snapshot that’s great for the family album is not negative and constructive, just negative. With a bit more improvement, the photo is the kind you might find on a poster or a post card–is there something wrong with that kind of photography? Is it somehow not worthy of being done well? (And, yes, I know there are questions of copyright, but that isn’t the issue here.)
As a newbie here, I’m probably walking in where angels fear to tread, but I have to say that if these are the kind of comments that pass for constructive on this forum, I won’t be here for long.
I see what you mean about the B&W. I was trying for a fairly distinct difference between the white and black, but I may have taken it too far. Here’s another try. What do you think? Too dark now.
Glad you think the one in color works better now. Thanks for your suggestions.
Yes, that’s nice! Now it has the more earthbound tones at the bottom and then soars into the blue. Since you’re good at taking things out of a photo, you might want to consider removing the man in the lower left corner–but, I think you added him because he’s not in the first version. Having someone in that corner might be good for balance (or maybe not), but for me, seeing his back and having him walking off the edge of the photo just doesn’t seem to work.
Sort of a shame to remove that glass “poster” from the photo since it’s a part of the scene, but unfortunately, you couldn’t really tell what it was and in my case it kept drawing my eye, so I think it’s better without it. Are you happy with it gone?
