Friday Photo Critique #46
Friday Photo Critique is our weekly community project, where we publish a photograph submitted by one of our wonderful readers, then ask you all to offer constructive feedback on the image. It’s a great way to learn more about photography, express your viewpoint, and have your own image critiqued!
Quick Ground Rules
- Play nice! We’ve deliberately chosen photographs that aren’t perfect, so please be constructive with any criticism.
- Feel free to offer any type of advice – composition, lighting, post-processing etc.
- You can also link to photographs that you feel offer a great example of this type of image shot exceptionally well.
Without further ado, here is this week’s candidate for Friday Photo Critique!
The Photograph
Photographer: Stefan de Graaf
Please let us know what you think in the comments – how would you have approached the scene or taken the photo differently? A massive thank you to everyone who commented last week.
The most constructive and helpful comments will be featured on the site. Interested in submitting your own photo? You can do so here!
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Nice shot. I like the sharpness of the bird against the blury background. Although I think the background is a bit to much, it takes your eyes of the subject (the bird). So more focus on the bird would be beter (in my opinion).
I’m a pretty young photographer and I’m still learning, so my advice won’t be that good I think.
But I would place the parrot a bit more to the right and a bit more down. Because of the rule of thirds.
I have to say, when I saw the picture for the first time, I thought: “Wow, that’s a good picture!”
Anyway there will be more points to correct, but I’m just a beginner!
I do think the bird in the lower right corner would look
nice too (not the far right of course).
Oh, nice shot! My only comment/critique really is the background. Despite the photo being focused well (bokeh going on and good DOF) the background is very busy and quite distracting from the subject.
If the shot was at a slightly different angle to reduce the busyness and perhaps cropped in on the subject a bit more (this would help reduce the background problem too), the photo would be pretty much perfect as the lighting is great.
The distracting quality of the background is due to the harsh bokeh that this lens possesses. None of the out of focus highlights are rendered very softly, and there’s nothing the photographer can do in this instance aside from spending a tone of money on a very nice lens, or editing in post to blur the background artificially.
Good shot though, all around. Maybe a bit tighter on the crop but that’s about all I’d change, I think.
I think the photograph’s got a very nice depth of field and some very nice colors. The only thing that kinda distracts me is that the subject is right in the center of the image. Maybe you could have shifted it a bit more to one side of the image. But I’m not sure if the photograph would really look better then.
The photo is nice, I would just have to second the “centering” aspect already mentioned.
Shifting parrot a bit to one side and zooming/moving a little closer could have helped in optimizing focus given to the subject.
As for the busyness, I reckon the “lightest” green bushes right below the parrot is not helping.
Hence, cropping a little might have help lighten up everything a little, whilst keeping the Parrot in the middle of the shot, if that was a specific wish.
Example of what I have in mind here :
http://www.clement-biger.info/photo/Parrot.jpg
Hello.
As Andris and Clement says, the only thing that bothers me on the photo is the centering.
You could make a better crop.
Altough, the colors are fantastic and i think the busy background adds some life to the shot.
I wish i could get that spirit on my photos. Keep up with the great work, my friend.
Best regards,
Henry Hingst
Hey Stefan,
Great shot. Nice color and near perfect exposure. Looks like you used a tripod for this and it paid off. Your meta-data showed ISO100 @ 200m. Insane sharpness for this subject. The resting pole to me makes the shot. Its like your personal National Geographic.
I took your image into post and notice some things that can really make this pop. First, you can brighten this up about 1/3 of a stop. Increasing the vibrance helped a lot and combined with a contrast boost allowed this image to be stunning right from the jpeg. I would personally retouch the white on the face around the eyes to give a cleaner look. Last, I think the DOF is fine. Coming in on the crop adds more interest and focus. I put a vin. on the cropped composition. I cropped to a widescreen ratio with a vertical orientation.
I uploaded to Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dsp606/4910149377/lightbox/
Hey earthrokk,
Thanks for the compliments! I’m a big fan of National Geographics photography actually (who isn’t) haha.
Really like how the edited photo came out. I’ll try to recreate that with the RAW file and try it with some of the other shots i took there and see what I can come up with. Also like the crop. Thanks for the suggestions!
Awww you deleted it!!!! Can you post it again?
I don’t know why you guys dislike centering subjects so much, the artist had a point of doing so, and I believed he did it well. His intention of centering really brings a element of calmness to the whole image as well as bringing importance to the parrot. I really like the feeling of this photo.
I think most people that have comented on the “Rule of Thirds” composition is that, for me anyway, there is no symetry with the parrot being in the center of the frame. When I look at it my eye is drawn to the parrot but then taken away by the background because of a lack of subject matter in the bottom left and an overabundance in the top right. In other words, it feels more weighted to the right of the image. This pulls my eyes away from the parrot which is the main point of subject in the picture. I would have personally cropped this image one of two ways:
1-Cropping so that the parrot was in the bottom right third of the image thus allowing the branches to still maintain a frame around the bird, or
2-Cropping so that the parrot was in the top right third of the image thus allowing all that negative space on the left to be a “looking” plane for the parrot.
In other words, I would crop out the green tree trunk on the right that battles for attention as well.
I do enjoy the contrasts in colors (blue and green and also the brown and green) which really makes this picture pop.
Finally, I don’t think I would vingette the image either.
Nice shot. Good depth of field and no issues with the non-central focus image. As Kevin said the overall feel is that of calm with little distraction from any of the elements mentioned. That said i like the previous comments and draw inspiration from there technical depth.
It’s a very nice and colorful picture as it is. I don’t have a problem with the parrot being right in the center of the shot. Sometimes it’s not so bad for the subject to be centered.
I don’t know exactly what they were shooting with either but I would’ve zoomed in on the parrot a little more since it is the main focus of the shot. Now I know sometimes that just isn’t possible if you don’t have a really long zoom lens. Overall I really like the color and subject.
The image is nice and sharp, but I think it needs severe cropping, in particular to get rid of the out-of-focus tree on the right. Obviously, this presents some issues with enlarging the cropped figure, depending on how big one wants it. I don’t hold with the “rule of thirds,” especially where the picture is, at bottom, a portrait.
I happen to like bird photos, particularly those birds in the parrot family. Try a little trick, reverse the photo so the bird is facing right (I know, it sounds dumb, but we live in a right-handed world, and it actually seems to add something).
I assume you got as tight on the bird as you could considering all conditions, including the lens(es) you had with you.
Nice focus,nice depth of field nice colours background OK .It misses a little exotic touch
Trees and the green wire but that’s not very important compare to the quality of the picture.
Great photo. You may also want to desaturate the background a little bit.
subject = rich blue, background = rich green => not very eye-catching.
Main things to change for me would be to darken down some of the greens, lighten the parrot about 1/3 stop and crop out the darker top and a little of the tree trunk on the right. Beautiful photo. Well done!
Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Really appreciate them. I tried putting the parrot off-center at first (lower and upper right) but didn’t like it so much. Will play a bit more with different crops to see if I can get a better one. And do agree with the background being too distracting. Going to play around with that aswell
Sadly couldn’t get closer to the parrot since it’s really shy (kept flying away if I came too close) and the longest lens I have is a 200mm (do have a 2x extender, but that makes everything really soft).
Might also try to remove the wire claude Brun mentioned. To be honest, I didn’t notice that untill you mentioned it.
Thanks again everyone!
It’s a great shot, the subject looks nice and sharp, and the blurred background doesn’t really form a distraction. If I would have to be critical, I would just have chosen another crop so the parrot would attract more attention, which it deserves. Erthrokk did a good job on making the colors pop a bit more. It’s not really a necessity, but it doesn’t hurt the shot either.
I like it, but watch out for the tangent with the branch in the background connecting with the branch in the foreground.
I think this is terrific, only thing I would have done on the fly is use a more open aperture to really blur the background more and thus make it less confusing and more of a flowing mix of colors to complement your subject.
If you had a flash available while shooting why not underexpose the background half a stop to a full stop and shoot with the flash correctly exposing your subject and the wooden pole? I think that would really make the subject POP and stand out, but then again with a spontaneous shot like this you probably don’t have a flash set up and if you do thats going to be your only chance to get a shot, I doubt the bird would just stand there after being blasted with light!
Anyways, terrific shot!
-Vlad
PS. I completely disagree with everyone who is citing the rule of thirds and complaining about the subject being centered. The rule of thirds is good and all, but rules are meant to be broken! Terrific framing. Maybe a tighter crop would make the shot more “WHOA” but I would definitely leave the parrot centered.
Wonderful light and stained glass colors!
Could you have come around to the front of back and done a 1/4 or 3/4 profile?
How about cropping down so we can appreciate just the teal feathers and the light coming through the leaves?
Nice.
I like you picture like it is: the richness of all the colours, and especially the fact that you see a lot of the pole on which the parrot is sitting on gives it a nice touch.
Hi A very nice picture one has to admit.. I would suggest the picture be cropped a bit to reduce the background size which could make one look at the object directly as there are too much of green at the back. and as others have also pointed out that the pic be moved to the side so that it would have a fantastic view. A very cool pic though