StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Well, I didn't take Photos of only babes last weekend while wandering through a tiny park and a small, moderately dull beach up north ("Yanai beach"). Enjoy the nature . (And please critique).



Biking chick. Shaddup Aerius . (She was there with her husband).

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Bird capture

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Shells

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Fly away

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Who needs Orion girls

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Sand rock

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a quickr pickr post

I'll try to be concise instead of Wall-O'-Text (TM); if you want me to elaborate on anything I'll do so.

Selection-18 and Selection-14: Much too much dead space in the skies, which really marginalizes everything else in the photo.

Selection-18 might be decent as a landscape with more ground than sky, because it looks like you've got some nice color going on down there - though it's hard to see for sure because it's so tiny.

Selection-19: Overexposed. Also, a wider aperture would have better marginalized the background, since it doesn't really add anything here.

Selection-1: Not your fault, but that's some pretty ugly bokeh there. Your subject's pretty bland as presented, too - it has no color or compositional interest of its own, and it's far too small within the frame to show off the form, which is the most interesting thing about it.

Selection-3: The first thing this photo needs is a purpose. There's no subject, but there's not really a set scene either; it's just 'stuff.' It might just be me, but your horizon looks crooked too - you should be wary of that, and fix it in post if you don't notice when you're shooting.

Selection-4: A bit washed-out, and a weak subject made weaker by a general lack of composition.

Selection-5: Much better than Selection-19 and Selection-1. Subject is distinct from the background in both focus and color; well done there. Exposure is better too. My preference would be to bring out the purple a little bit more, but that's a matter for post-processing. Bokeh's still a bit harsh, but that's your lens.

Selection-6: Pretty much the same comment as for Selection-4, except less washed out. With old buildings like this, the best parts are in the details - shapes (like the roof tiles), textures (like the adobe), and such, but you have to get right up close to show them off. Alternately, you need to place the building in a scene. As-is, this is just a reference shot.

Selection-7: I probably wouldn't have noticed the bird if you hadn't captioned it. Wildlife photography is like portrait photography; the animal should clearly dominate the frame. This is hard if you don't have a telephoto (or cooperative animals), but them's the breaks.

Selection-8 and Selection-9: These two illustrate a good point about angles: Whenever you take a picture of something when just standing there looking at it - straight-on, slightly downward - you are taking a picture of the exact same point of view everyone else sees. Look at your scene/subject from different angles before shooting - there's a reason photographers are pantomimed as jumping from angle to angle making that little square in front of their eyes with their hands.

Selection-9 might have been better as a closeup on just a small part of the midden.

Selection-10 through Selection-12: Not a lot in these ones for you to work with, so I guess I can't really blame you for not making much of them.

Selection-13: Angles, again. You should have shot so that perspective would have brought the people and the kite nearer together in the frame. As it is, your subjects are nearly elbowed out of the photo by a lot of dead space.

Selection-15: The 'photo made entirely of straight lines' is kind of interesting in an abstract way. I don't love it but it doesn't turn me off, either - if I was there, I would probably want to play around with that site a bit and see what I could make of it.

Selection-17: The rock defines an empty space in the very center of the photo that hasn't got anything in it - you've got a good frame there, but it's not framing anything. Needs a friend wearing bright colors or something like that.

Selection-20: Like Selection-17, you've set up a frame with nothing in it, except the frame isn't very interesting at all. If you had caught a friend doing a swan dive off the quay you'd at least have an interesting snapshot; as it is this is about as close to a photo of nothing as it gets.

Selection-21: Those doors are pretty cool. They have color, texture, and line - you should use them for close-up practice.

Aesthetics: I don't know if you're looking for explicit comment on aesthetics as well as more technical things, but I'm going to offer it anyway. Most of these photos, sad to say, are pretty dull. Those most don't demand much more than a glance, and sometimes they don't even offer anything to glance at - which pretty well defeats the point of photography.

It falls on you to do two things. The first is to make your photos as interesting as possible, either by taking photos of interesting and unusual things or by figuring out how to make relatively mundane things look interesting. That's where a lot of the hard work is, in that last bit. In these photos, for instance, there is a lot of sea and a lot of sky. You have your work cut out for you, because the sea and the sky are the two biggest, emptiest things on this whole entire planet. This is where you will want to preview your shots from as many different angles and ranges as possible, and put a lot of thought into what you are shooting, and particularly what, exactly, you are trying to show people in your photo - being aware that all you have to work with is a still image with a limited field of view. Look with your eyes alone only to see what things might be worth looking at through a camera. Remember: you are trying to capture the attention of the viewer.

The second thing is to kick your editorial process into gear. Before you shoot, ask yourself if what you are about to shoot will look good as a photo, not just in and of itself. There will be lots of shots that simply won't frame up to your satisfaction, even after all of your efforts to find a good angle etc. When that happens, you have two choices: just take a snapshot to remind you, personally, of the cool thing you saw, or just bag it. Then, before you show your photos to other people, go through them and examine them impersonally. By this I mean look at them not with reference to your memories of the cool thing you saw when you took the picture, but as a photograph standing alone. The aim of editing your photo collection for presentation isn't to throw out the worst, but to select only the best.

(If you do this, you will omit photos that you really like, because they just don't look good enough. And, if you're like me, that will be a painful process, because you really like those photos. At least you don't have to actually throw them out, and maybe they can even be improved in post - but the editorial eye still has to be ruthless.)