Photo Critique #95

Photo Critique #95

on Jul 29th 2011 with 7 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 Critique

Photo Details & Inspiration

  • Panasonic Lumix ZS7
  • 1/250
  • f/4
  • 25mm (35mm equivalent)
  • ISO 200
  • Auto white balance
  • Program exposure mode

I love taking photos of water drops. While i was hiking, i chanced upon this little guy. Thankfully, he held still long enough for me to snap this picture.

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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  • Nate

    Cool Photo!

    I’d suggest maybe dodging around the body of the spider (especially the legs) to maybe bring out some more detail.

    Compositionally, I think the spider could be either exactly in the center, or maybe a bit more off-center. You could just crop it differently. It looks a bit like you were trying to get it in the center but missed a bit.

    The focus is really good and I like how the background is blurred!

  • http://www.vinsonimages.com jason

    i like it a lot! the only thing i would have liked is if the water drops where in focus…. i think something like f11 instead of f4 would have worked a little better.

    • jason

      also, maybe bringing down the green saturation a bit to take away the distraction and help the spider pop out a bit more!

  • Tony

    Great photo, and what a cool subject to find!

    Assuming you did have a way to do this, I would’ve tried to position myself higher and more to the left than you’ve done here. I realize that this may not have been possible given your circumstances at the time. However it it were possible, you could have put the entire web in front of the green plants in the background, providing more contrast and making the overall background less distracting. This also would’ve put your lens more parallel with the web, so that the shallow DOF could have still captured the entire web in focus while still blurring what would’ve been a distracting background.

    I’m not sure if a shallow DOF is what you were going for, but if it wasn’t, you had a lot of headroom to increase it. The pic was taken with a 1/250 shutter speed, when even something like 1/100 would’ve been more than enough to prevent camera shake at 25mm/35mm. Slowing your shutter would’ve enabled you to shoot with a smaller aperture for larger DOF, or to take it down to ISO 100 if you so desired, although 200 is more than adequate.

    In this situation I would’ve also centered my focus on an area halfway between the center of the web and the closest edge. Autofocus could easily lock in on the spider at the center, but a lock on the thin threads in another part of the web would probably be much easier to get with manual focus.

    Composition-wise I might have considered taking a second shot or cropping, coming in just a bit closer and filling the entire frame with the web instead of having the edge be visible. This, though, is a highly subjective comment and depends upon the effect you’re trying to achieve.

    Great subject and you have a good eye to have noticed it. Happy shooting!

  • http://www.konraddwojak.com Konrad Dwojak

    Hi!

    Great idea and eye for the subject. The first thing that comes to my mind is that I would reframe and reposition the camera so that the spiders net is in 90-degrees to the camera. This way it would be much easier for the camera to focus on the spider (it seems that the picture is slightly out of the focus) and the spiders net would give you a nice patter. In addition, I would fill out the frame with the net and eventually maybe use a bit higher f/stop – like f.5.6 to make sure that the net and the spider are nicely in focus.

  • http://sriramkrajan.blogspot.com Sriram

    Nice picture. If only you had been able to get the spider also fully, it would have given a more dramatic look. However, I can understand how difficult to get the right angle considering, you wouldn’t venture to get too close. The DOF could have been more shallow to avoid distraction. Overall, nice frame.!

  • http://www.danmarshcreative.com Dan

    I think this is a great photo. Some of the things I would consider are that its great to see the play with the angle, but for this particular photo it seems as if its almost ot much. Its a very drastic angle to look at. The other aspect i would look at is there is a little to much blue in the image, by lowering the amount of blue in your RGB settings the image will pop more.