Photo Critiques

If you attend one of our workshops, you are invited to submit your favourite image for inclusion on this page. The photograph can either be taken during the workshop, or subsequently. We will comment on your image and make suggestions that will help in improving your photography.

Eider Duck - Paula Moss

Paula Moss

Eider Duck

This is a difficult subject exposure-wise, with the immense contrast between the duck's black and white plumage. Here there's a lot of detail in the white feathers, at the expense of the black areas. I just brightened the eye area slightly to bring out the catchlight. The composition is good, with the duck having 'looking-space' within the image and the colours and detail in the water make a good background. Depending upon the distance from camera to subject, some flash might have brought out just a little more detail.

Jon Willis
Waterfall

Here an aperture of f25 has given a shutter speed of 1/5 second. This is slow enough to blur the movement of the water and give it a silky appearance.
Jon's composition works well, even though the subject is placed centrally in the image, due to the zig-zags of water that lead the eye from the top to the bottom of the shot.

I increased the contrast in Photoshop to make the water appear a little brighter.

Waterfall - Jon Willis

Sam Webb
Pier

Technically this is a great photo. The light is perfect and the exposure is spot-on and an Aperture of f20 has given a long enough shutter speed to nicely blur the movement of the tide on the beach. In terms of composition I would like to see the horizon one-third of the way down the shot, and the pier coming into the shot from the bottom right-hand corner, which would give diagonals throughout the image instead of horizontal lines which rather break up the shot. I look forward to seeing more of your work Sam.

Christine Bennett

Machu Picchu

As a composition I like this shot, with diagonal lines of contrasting shades dividing up the shot.

The exposure is good for the sky and snow-covered mountain-top, but as a consequence the foreground is very dark and contains no detail, because the camera simply can't exposure correctly for both very bright and very dark areas in the same image.

I tried lightening the foreground in Photoshop, using Shadow/Highlight, and was able to reveal a lot more detail of the trees on the hillside, but at the expense of image quality.

The way to get a correct exposure for both the sky and foreground when taking the shot would be to use a grey graduated filter placed diagonally over the bright part of the image. This would even out some of the contrast between the foreground the the bright areas and allow the camera to capture a much better exposure of the foreground. Needless to say, that means carrying more kit up the mountain!

Christine Bennett - Machu Picchu

Martin Speed

Sunrise

I love the light and texture of the clouds - they feel quite solid. I have adjusted the levels slightly in Photoshop to bring out the colours. This also helps darken the top right-hand corner of the shot, which then better balances the silhouette of the tree in the opposite corner. Would it have been possible to move your viewpoint to get the twigs at the top into that corner? That would also help balance the branches bottom left.

Emily Watts
Tulips

I like the shape of the group of three tulips and the central flower in the group is very sharp and detailed.
The other flowers being slightly out of focus works well to give a sense of depth, and the angle of the stems makes a much more dynamic image than having them vertical.
Could you have moved the flower bottom right so that it was out of the shot? I find that one distracting.
Also by moving your viewpoint, could you have excluded the brick wall from the background? A plainer coloured, more blurred background would set off the flowers even better. If you were at your lens's smallest f number, could you have moved the camera closer to the flowers? This would have given you a shallower depth of field and more blurring of the background.

PHOTO CRITIQUES