Photo Critique #162
tuts workshop

Photo Critique #162

on Nov 9th 2012 with 8 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

  • Nikon D90
  • 60mm
  • 1/2
  • f/8
  • ISO 100

I live in a residential school in rural India. We share our home with many different species of animals including, frogs, crabs, lizards and snakes. We found this poisonous viper resting on a leaf outside our house the other day. I wanted to portray that we live in his/her habitat, not the other way around.

Photographer: Siddharth Atre

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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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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  • DasGorille

    Nice picture but here would be my remarks:

    1- The snake head seems to be slightly blurred. A better focus on the snake eye would have given a better feel

    2- Some colors seem to have been over-saturated (particularly visible at the bottom-right)

    Maybe you should try to process your image with a tool that has a better color rendering. You should take a look at OpticsPro. Take a look at this blog post http://cuk.ch/articles/5255 (scroll down to the middle of the page) and how this soft is able to “rescue” over-saturated colors during a concert. Maybe it could do the trick for your image as well.

  • ChitraSivasankarArunagiri

    Great shot! But I don’t see it matching with what you have mentioned. The picture is too tight to interpret the way you do but not to forgot everybody have their unique way of understanding. You could have worked a bit more on the composition framing in some of other details around.

    • http://jeremybeasley.com/ jeremy beasley

      I want to echo this sentiment. Many people have commented on the technical improvement that could be made. However, I feel an even bigger improvement could be made in the storytelling.

      There is a mismatch between your intention and the photograph. If you were to read your photograph as a sentence, it would read “snake”. However, your original intent was to communicate “we” (people, humans, etc.) “live in his/her environment”.

      I’d improve the photo by adding additional elements to show “your presence” in the “snake environment”. It might a little more challenging and perhaps even staged (good luck getting the snake to cooperate) but I think it would make for a more compelling photo.

      Good luck, Siddharth! Thanks for sharing!

  • http://www.facebook.com/aroncoop Aron Cooperman

    A couple of things I see…
    1) the current framing doesn’t show the viper in it’s environment. it cuts the snake in half… what happened to the tail??
    2) With a tight frame the field of focus should cover the whole viper… part of the snake is either out of focus of depth of field is not larger enough to have the snake 100% sharp.

    3) There is a lot of bright green, but then there is if brown leaf (I think it’s a leaf)… it kind of draws my attention away because it’s a different color. Obviously you can’t remove that because the snake would either bite you or flee… but a wider framing of the subject might have helped there.

  • tenclaw

    Overall i like the shot, but i agree with the slight out of focus issues, i would love to see if you have any more shots from different angles perhaps?

    Good stuff-

  • Anton Gericke

    I read all the comments, but considering you were taking a photograph of a poisonous snake, you have done very well!! You were using 60mm focal length, so you were pretty close to the viper, brave man!!

  • Valerie

    I agree there are a couple of technical shortcomings to this shot – the focus is slightly off and the snake is cut off by the edge of the frame, which slightly upsetes the intention to show it in its environment. That said, I’ve got nothing but admiration for your perspective on sharing your environment with wildlife, and for your chops for getting so close! On the plus side, the light is nicely diffused, the colours are bright and vivid and the background is nicely soft to keep attention on the subject.

  • footloosegups

    My take is more of an alternative than a critique but here goes.
    Knowledge is key here. Your snake is a young Malabar pit Viper. It is totally harmless, which means you could have gotten a LOT closer and tried out various backgrounds and compositions at leisure. Very few wild snakes will allow you to get as close as this species. Make the most of the opportunity to make a unique image.
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/aniruddhagupte/8202190284/in/photostream