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You’ve got a project! I love it if I can find a project. Yours is to capture the cottage. Work it, move round it, try different lenses, times of day … a pretty good way of, sadly, saying goodbye.
That is certainly better to my mind @ms-fowler.
My first thought was a question ‘Why do you want it punchier?’.
I’m not going to add anything new, just to say that I would try cropping away a third of the sky above the top of the lighthouse, and I think the light vignette might work too.
I’m borrowing from David Duchemin, and my own efforts over the last few months, but I don’t think there is any balance within the frame. I feel there is certainly something better to be had from this situation and the interest is all in the right two-thirds of the frame. I think that I would have pushed, by framing tighter, or turning the camera to the right, the small black plume of clouds to the left, beyond its current position on the ‘third’. I hope that makes sense, and possibly helps.
Sorry to be blunt, but no balance or real point of focus within the frame. Move a long way right and get the Shard within the tree/bush and use that as a frame. or crop much tighter. I think you can lose probably as much as half of the bottom greenery. That’s how it strikes me.
No comments? How strange. Maybe it is perfect?
My gut (I wasn’t there, don’t know what was possible) says move quite a lot of steps left, get more separation from the deer and the tree trunk. At risk of blowing out the bodies of the animals, half a stop extra exposure. However, I can imagine the movement might help to get some light on their faces. Maybe I am being too optimistic there. The faces then the antlers strike me as what is important. Again, the movement left, and the rising dark background of trees might help with that. Easy to be wise after the event, but I hope there is something useful in my comments.
What fantastically brilliant comments you’ve garnered … especially from Michael. His line about beginning at the heart and progressing to the mind is just so true.
If your emotional reaction to this was what you’ve said in the title, I think you’d need to ask if you have actually captured the sunset and the ramp. I think waiting about another (I’m guessing) 15 or 20 minutes till the sun is breaking the horizon, then moving left and down, to include a lot more of the ramp, at least make it much more prominent feature, might have worked well.
No comments? I’m not surprised, because it is a very interesting shot. I can only offer a couple of small detailed observations. I think it must have been possible to have taken two or three steps left and had the tower stand seperately. Make sense? Either that, or take a step or two right and have it sticking more obviously out of the top of the porch. One way or the other for me, in or out. The other thing is that ‘level’ can be very tricky, but this is falling to the right to my way of thinking. What is imporaant in the image. I think the answer is the tower and the edge, the corner of the building. I think both are falling right, and the edge of the building might even be better if it was leaning a tiny touch left, to allow the tower to be more uprightt.
Hope that helps!
Nice enought shot, but as you’ve titled it ‘Family Portrait’, I think you’ve almost answered your own question. This is not, to my mind a family portrait. Sorry to be blunt, but it is a photo of some people, who you might be able identify if you know them. For most of us it is a shot of some people by a river. I think you could get much closer (moving left and forward), make the family occupy at least a quarter of the frame and still include a lot of the nice scenery. Obviously that is wisdom (?) in hindsight, but that is how I hope I would have taken this shot.
Spectacular sky … BUT … for me skies without any reference point, usually a bit of land, make me almost queasy.
Very interesting. The pont about the dog would, to me, be about what story you’re trying to tell. Dog in the frame, you want him obvious and active and that tells one story. Another, perfectly valid story, is ‘isolated country lane, in winter, without a living soul, not even a dog in sight’. Both work for me!
Calibration – I like Martin Bailey’s tip of turning down the brightness much, much lower than most people have their monitors usually set to. As such, I think of calibration as colour (I am very weak in that respect) but I think the monitor being set too bright is part of it, isn’t it?
Composition seeing this small, I thought ‘nothing wrong with that – cracking shot!’. But I think other comments are very right in respect of the lighting. I like the more subdued version which you have posted. Th first thing which struck me however, and I do seem to be hypersensitive to this, but NOT always right, is that it is falling to the right. I think ‘level’ is a surprisingly subjective matter, and you have to work out what is the crictical line in each and every photo. In this shot it is, for me, the tea pot lid. Look at the line drawn by that. I think the mind can cope with the things at the edge, the cups, falling out of the frame, but at least my mind needs the top of the tea pot to appear level.
Not supposed to say nice things, but I thing this is a super shot. Because it is very good, it is details which will improve it.
I like all the comments you’ve received. I think the reason you’ve invited comments is because you know that there was something better there, something better to be taken. As others have said, get lower, or get higher. But given the photograph we have in front of us, I would crop it. I would crop as tight as I could at the top to remove the sky, but keep as much of the grass as I could. This would give the photograph a much more claustrophobic feeling with the idea that the grass and path go on for a great deal further. That’s my two cents.
No comments? The reason why is probably one of the stronger shots which have been posted with not such obvious flaws. We’re not supposed to say positives, but it is a very nice shot, but I do think, as I think you probably do too, that it can be improved. Maybe get lower, maybe push the tree a little bit higher and a tiny bit more to the vertical edge of the frame. Maybe move to the other side, the right side, of the lane. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but those small shifts might introduce just a touch more dynamic the image. If you were low down, next to the hedge on the right, the dog would probably appear less static. Hope you see what I mean.
This is very interesting. I’ve looked at a few of the photos which people have posted, and it seems to me that they are posted for the very good reason that people know they’ve taken a good shot, but they also know that there was something better to be extracted from the situation.
I do not mean it in a pejorative sense when I say this is a ‘snapshot’. I am a big advocate for the snapshot. I’ve kicked myself for the number of times when I’ve been too busy trying to take something of higher aspirations, that I’ve failed to take a good old fashioned snapshot, or ten, capturing the situation and the moment without concern for it being a better quality photograph.
I might be wrong, you might smack me around the head, but I have feeling redman that you are probably a good photographer of other things, other situations. Candids of kids are not easy. As far as I know, what you’ve done technically is very good, it certainly seems to have yielded a good result.
However, back to the beginning, I think you know there is something better. I think you are right. You’ve got a handsome, expressive young boy, dressed in a flattering blue, delighted with his new toy. Very simple to say, not so easy to do, but you’ve got a snapshot of a bit of window, a lot of barbecue grill, and a boy who is not filling the frame enough for me. It is a simple adage, but ‘fill the frame’ usually works well with these candids of kids. Be prepared to stick the camera on motor drive and discard a lot. That is justified for me when kids move so quickly. You aren’t a big game hunter trying to get the one right shot!
The other thing, which also can’t be changed so easily in post processing is to look for a cleaner background. I like what Scott Bourne once said about his bird photography, that he looks for a good background then waits for something to fly past. I don’t know the situation here, but three steps right, head on straight to the boy, with the plane held towards you, and his smiling face in sharp focus would probably give something reasonable, possibly something very good.
