Photo Critique #109

Photo Critique #109

on Nov 4th 2011 with 11 comments

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

  1. Play nice! We’ve deliberately chosen photographs that aren’t perfect, so please be constructive with any criticism.
  2. Feel free to offer any type of advice – composition, lighting, post-processing etc.
  3. 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

Photo Details & Inspiration

  • Canon Rebel T2i
  • 50mm f/1.8 II
  • 1/125
  • f/2.2
  • ISO 100

I took this picture one day at the beach, the interested looks of those three as opposed to the bored looks of everyone else made me decide to isolate them with DOF.

Photographer: Mark Estefanos

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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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

I was raised in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. After high school, I left for Western Kentucky University where I obtained degrees in photojournalism and cultural anthropology. I am currently employed by CityBeat, an arts and entertainment weekly in Cincinnati. The work I am doing here is very rewarding and I suspect it will continue to be. I am available for freelance work in all areas of photography.  

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  • zanu

    You could have waited , until one raised an arm and pointed with his finger towards something. :D, and maybe get alligned with the railing(my opinion ) .

  • http://sripalindia.blogspot.com/ Sripal

    great work!

    In my opinion
    50mm is not telephoto enough for this shot. it could be nice if much longer focal length were used to compress perspective.

    Don’t try to cover everything in your frame.Cropping on the left a bit will do.

    Placing the eyes on the first one third of the frame will make a huge difference in shots like this .(too much head room)

  • http://sripalindia.blogspot.com/ Sripal

    one more thing the photo is a bit (like 1/3 stop) under exposed

    I saw you used center weighted average metering

    spot metering on the face could have been better

    Auto white balance made the photo a bit blue

  • Chris

    The contrasting facial expressions are great, but the remainder of the image doesn’t add to the purpose of the photograph. For me, the image would have been easier to process if it was focused solely on the expressions. The red truck, fishing pole, and building in the background added some unnecessary noise. Otherwise, a great opportunity for a photo!

  • Ben

    The red truck on the right side seems to dominate the photo to me, and the lamp post divides the photo in half. It’s almost like there are 2 photos here. And like sripal said, I think filling the frame more with your subjects’ faces would have been better.

  • http:/blog.jessehouwing.nl/ Jesse Houwing

    I’ve personally tried taking interesting pictures of people fishing, and it’s hard. After reading the reason for taking the photo and looking back at it, I looked at it in a whole new way. When I originally looked at it I found it strange that most of the picture was blurry, and that my attention was lead towards the red car in the back. When I look at it now, I see what you’re getting at and for me, the best way to achieve your goal of singling out the not-boring people, would be to remove all the distracting stuff.

    There’s a few ways to do so, either crop much tighter around the people you want to focus on. Or make the background a lot more blurry. Or look for lines in the picture that lead me directly towards the area you want me to focus on either by changing your position or the angle towards your area of focus.

    Alternative crop: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-vbnh12bdRvc/TrVhnSPdaxI/AAAAAAAARus/CnQAjQxM8n8/s144/Untitled.png

    Something else I missed in this picture is the water. These people are looking at something, there’s a hint of what they’re looking at by the inclusion of the fishing rod, but it would be nice to know why they’re not bored.

  • Colo43

    I found that your photo had not focused on any set subject, thus detracting from the shot.

  • Brandon

    Its an okay shot. I wish you would have shot portrait orientation and would have moved closer to the fisherman to fill the frame with their faces. The fishing pole in focus (or at least relatively in focus) pulls my vision away from their faces and to the bottom right. Also the red truck is distracting. However, good DOF and you had a good eye in catching their facial expressions.

  • http://www.jessicalatten.com Jessica

    Not bad.

    I agree that its a tad underexposed. I would have either cropped the shot or shot it to get what they were looking at into the shot. You probably would have wanted to move in and a bit to your left to do that though.

  • Denny

    The BIG RED TRUCK with it’d name plastered on the side is sooooooooo distracting.the only way to get the picture to stand alone would have been to get the truck out of the scene somehow.

  • http://qzyxya.deviantart.com Elliot

    I love the 50mm 1.8, but a telephoto would look better, to isolate one single expression. Maybe something like a 85mm 1.8 or the 70-300.

    But with that lens, it looks great! I also agree with the person who said that you should have waited for someone to point. Also, you could have lowered the aperture to 1.8 or 2.0 to give more DOF. If you had moved closer, or zoomed it in, than the other people fishing that are out of focus wouldn’t be as distracting.
    I opened the image in a new tab and pressed the zoomed in one click, and it looked way better. The woman and children in the BG along with the toyota truck are distraacting.

    Also, on closer inspection, the focus looks really nice! Was it auto? With my old 20d, that lens searches for ages, so it’s not worth it on auto but this looks amazing!

    What white balance? Looks perfect! Did you shoot it in raw and then mess around with lightroom or something?

    anyways, great shot! =D