Critique me please (if you have time) :) Round 1

[blacktailcody]

What would you change? How would you have edited it? General advice? Thanks in advance for your time.



#1




#2



#3




#4




#5




#6




#7




#8




#9




#10

[spikehunter]

lOOKS GOOD TO ME 

[coachcw]

You should have left the elk in them.

[Katmai Guy]

Should have shot the coyote.

[Katmai Guy]

Seriously, some great shots.

[DRobnsn]

It could just be my old POS laptop but that number 3 pic just stands out as extremely detailed compared to the others 

They all look awesome but for some reason that one stands out big time for me in a good way.

Agreed should've blasted the Yote 

[Bean Counter]

#2 and #3 capture motion/time well. I might play with the orange and red hues in Lightroom to adjust to taste. There isn't really a "correct" setting. Its all about the expression of your vision.

#4 is 'nice.' since the context doesn't seem to add much for me so I would have zoomed in as much as possible for the viewers eye to focus on the mutt.

#5 is my favorite and has a lot of potential but looks comparatively awful in its current form. Great fore-middle-background elements.  Did you skip the polarizer? this would have been the best improvement and you can only do so much to replace it now. I would add a brush to the waves for more contrast, dodge and burn the forest to accentuate the red trees and deemphasize the green ones, and maybe play with their colors a bit too. Pull your luminance bar to the left on the blue channel and it will help with the skies and mountains in the background, and be sure to manually set your white point so that the snow caps pop.

#6. Rule of thirds. When I have a cloudless sky, I will put 2/3 on the landscape and relegate the blue to to the lesser 1/3. We love sunshine, but clear skies can make for some boring landscape photos esp here in Arizona 

#7. This one has potential too but I'm wondering if the highlights on the bird got blown out. Remember that when you're shooting a lighter subject against a darker background you'll usually need to use -1 to -2 stops of (negative) exposure compensation in order to not blow out the highlights. This can be 'helped' in post processing, but not completely ameliorated. Like a circular polarizer, the best results come from getting it right in camera.  Here is a good segment on how to expose properly when shooting:

Should start at 2:01:00 more or less.

#8. This is well composed but I would spend a few minutes tinkering with the exposure, lighting, and contrast in similar ways to #5 above.

[fishnfur]

I'm starting to like Bean Counter.  He obviously knows his craft.  Really, really good landscape and photography depends on commitment to getting the shot that you envision, based on what is in front of you.  You often don't have the opportunity to pose your subject, so you must decide what your real subject is, what appeals to you in what you are seeing, and play with the different ways that you can put in on "film".  If you are really serious, which you seem to be, I would recommend that you read volumes on every topic available to you in your desired subject matter.

As bean counter points out, you can use the settings on your camera to alter the amount of light entering your camera by f/stop, which in a fast lens, can in close up, produce really nice out of focus images both in front and behind the object of the photo.  You can zoom in and out to change the framing,  Move higher or lower to change your angle of view, catch the subject in the early morning or late at sunset for more subtle lighting situatons.... on and on.  It all depends on how much time you have and how devoted you are to getting the pic.  I believe Ansel Adams used to spend days waiting for just the right light for many of his photos.   You can luck into a perfect picture every once in awhile, but usually, you will have to make the decision before you take the photo, just what you want it to look like when it is printed.

So here's my critique, which should not dissuade you from liking what you like, it is just what I like:

#1 -  great pic.  Hard to get such an impressive mountain on film.  Nice job, but I'd defer to Bean's rule of 3rd's on this one too.  Painters use this rule endlessly.  More reading for you.

#2 - that's the shot I would have tried and been happy with.  I wonder what it would have looked like from up above looking down, or from the side in portrait vs. landscape.

#3 - My star in this pic is half missing.  I like the pool of water.  I would have shot that.

#4  - Zoom the shot or crop the pic down substantially.  It's nice as it is though.

#5 - It's a good pic, well composed.  Much of it is mid-tones.  The dark strip behind the boat draws your eye away, a bit, from the subject.  This one you could shoot a hundred different setting and decide later what you liked best.  Bean's comments on filters  - I'll take his word for it.  Go with that.

#7 - I like the subject.  The birds beak gets lost in the mid-ground.  That is fine for the undersides of the bird, your mind will fill it in.  We like to see faces.  A change in angle or waiting for the bird to move might have made this better.

#8 - fun pic,  I think if you played with the cropping for awhile, you might like it alot better.  Myself, I would loose a third of the right side, a little of the foreground, and some of the sky on the left.

#9 - Sitting eagles are rarely fun for me, especially from below.  I stay away from that subject and just enjoy watching them.  I don't try to compete with the pros on this subject.  It's all been recorded, ad nauseum.

#10 - I'm not sure what this is, but I like the idea a lot.  Good play on textures and light.  Not so good composition.  Cropping might help.  Balance in a painting or a photo is very important.  Darks carry more weight, and so this photo is lop-sided to the right.  This has the potential of being my fav. of the bunch.

I'm tired...   Go shoot some more!

[blacktailcody]

Wow! Really really appreciate the answers! I have a lot of learning to do! I'm only 17 though so I have most of my life ahead of me to get better at what I love. I will do my best to take your critiques and get some better pictures!

[blacktailcody]

I reworked the boat. Any better?

[huntnphool]

Make sure you are shooting RAW, it will make it much easier to adjust the images you posted, white balance specifically.

[blacktailcody]

I do! are my pictures to warm/cold?

[Bean Counter]

I'm curious about the boat on the water shot now...do you remember whether you had a polarizer on the lens or not?

[blacktailcody]

I didn't have one on. It was my telephoto lens and I usually have it on my wide angle.

[dmv9]

Overall, I liked all of them and wished I could have shot them myself.

#1 Looks a little washed out. Needs a little color pumping. It looks like one of those pictures from a magazine in the 1970's. Not that that's a bad thing if that's what you are going for.
#2 Looks ever so slightly out of focus.
#3 Nice contrast. Good color. I'm just not sure if it's cropped correctly. Try cropping the top and the right and see if that looks better.
#4 Yeah, he needs shootin
#5 I think the mountains need more color. The dark strip of land is taking a lot of focus away. The boat looks awesome.
#6 Washed out colors and needs some cropping

That's it for me.