Critiques

AdrianW (2241) 2008-10-05 21:39

Nice shot Janos! The sky's interesting, with lots of high wispy Cirrus clouds, and the pink tint to them adds just a touch of all three primary colours to your composition.

The sandstone bluffs make an interesting backdrop; and the trees towards the centre of the frame are nice too.

Compositionally I think I'd have liked a more obvious focal point; there are lots of elements here, but unfortunately to me they seem to be vying for attention, rather than forming a coherent story. If the sandstone is the subject, personally I'd like it to be more prominent in the composition I think. I might be tempted to crop the lower quarter off the bottom, as the cars in the car park don't add positively to the composition IMO. That said, composition is very much subjective, and how I see something can be very different to how anyone else will see it!

Something's not right technically though, unfortunately I'm having a hard time pinning it down precisely. The highlights on the trees seem to lack detail; particularly towards the right hand edge. Oddly the histogram looks reasonably sane; although you've slightly overexposed the sandstone itself, it's not a major issue for the majority of it. The histogram doesn't look chopped either, but it feels like a solarization/quantization type effect. Interestingly if you convert it to 256 colours, then there's very little change to the image; I'm wondering whether it accidentally got converted at some point? How did you process it?

P.S. Deleting your pictures is one way to guarantee no-one will visit them; martyrdom awaits you ;)

P.P.S. Panoramic format images are always a hard sell on the Trek sites and Flickr; as a 150px width thumbnail shows a lot less detail for panoramas. I'm sometimes tempted to shoot for square for that reason!

AdrianW (2241) 2008-09-05 13:50

Nice shot David! Perfect timing with the little 'un poking his head out like that; and the reflection's great too :D

My only slight nits are that there seems to be a halo around the grebe itself (particularly down the back of the neck), and a there seems to be a slight lack of fine detail all over. How did the original unworked image look? If there's plenty of detail and no haloes it might be worth re-working it a little. I suspect the haloes are a sharpening artifact (USM? Radius 3px or so?); and if I were to guess, I'd say this was a hard crop? If so that might explain the lack of fine detail. Of course it's a Friday night, so I might simply be hallucinating it all ;)

AdrianW (2241) 2008-08-06 20:36

Very nicely done Tan! This is definitely my favourite of the three, here the wheel seems to point to the Petronas Towers, and the red contrasts better with the deep blue of the sky in my opinion!

Exposure's very nicely managed, and the shot was taken at my favourite time too; the blue hour just after sunset! Can't quite decide whether I'd run Shadow/Highlight and bump the Shadow up a little, you'd lose the night feel, but you'd gain a bit more separation on the near shrubbery.

One thing I'd definitely do in your shoes is a dark frame subtraction, even at TE size there seem to be some stuck pixels, for instance there are two red ones that I can see instantly here (top left for example). Unfortunately they move in the other shots, so it looks like you'd need to take a dark frame manually after each shot if you wanted to map the dead pixels out. In your shoes I might consider cloning them out of the uploaded shot at least.

It's still a favourite image of mine; and a view of Petronas that I haven't seen before :D

AdrianW (2241) 2008-08-05 14:48

Nice shot Kik! The sky is a perfect mix of blue sky and white fluffy clouds; the reflections add to the calm and relaxed feel, but it's the bridge that makes the shot for me :D

If this were mine I think I might be tempted to brighten it a little though; as it stands it feels ever so slightly underexposed to me. Ideally in brightly sunlit scenes the histogram should just touch the right hand side; so when shooting I'd aim for as close to the edge as you can without going over, and then I'd pull it right up to the edge before uploading. In this case adding a fraction more contrast would also help I think, so try an s-shaped curve like this.

AdrianW (2241) 2008-05-30 19:46

Nice shot Patrick! I like the way the road draws the eye towards the coming maelstrom ahead. Your HDR work is nicely done too, it looks very natural IMO.

About the only thing I do notice is a slight softness that I often see with fractionally out of alignment HDR images. If you agree, try re-processing it with the latest version of Photomatix, and experiment with the alignment options in there.

Also, if you have five images like this, check to see whether you think any are not contributing significantly to the end result, and consider dropping those frames; fewer frames usually results in better alignment too.

If fewer frames and the alignment options still result in slight softness, try using something like PTgui to pre-align the frames before you merge them.

Overall a very nice piece of work though :D

AdrianW (2241) 2008-05-21 18:40

Nice work Amber! The dutch tilt adds a little excitement to the composition, and in theory the strong backlighting should make those colours really pop too!

You've done well to keep the exposure balanced, as there's both strong light and deep shadow in the shot. As is fairly common I feel the shadows could benefit from a little warming; if you're using Photoshop try applying Image/Adjustments/PhotoFilter Warm-85 at 50% or so to a new layer and knocking out the sunlit parts. I think I'd be tempted to use a little Shadow/Highlight to darken the highlights a little too.

I might also be tempted to save with a little less JPEG compression; as the sky seems to block up when I apply Shadow/Highlight to it. If you're reworking this version of the image, you could just blur the sky a little.

Overall a commendable effort, particularly considering the tricky lighting :)

AdrianW (2241) 2008-05-21 16:48

Lovely shot Izzet! Your choice of mild-telephoto compresses the gaps between the flowers perfectly, and your low angle converts the tulips into a solid wall of colour. The mist helps soften the edges just enough to finish the effect to perfection. The lamppost makes a great focal point too!

If this were mine, I think I might have been tempted to zoom in on the lamp-post a bit more to make it even more prominent in the composition though, but that's purely subjective.

Overall though, I love it, sufficiently so that it's now added as one of my favourites :D

AdrianW (2241) 2008-05-11 16:28

Nice shot Phil! This is a powerful sky, with plenty of cloud detail, and it's perfectly exposed too :D

That said, in my opinion the silhouetted skyline could be stronger. I feel that perhaps getting a little closer to that tower on the right might have strengthened it a little.

Overall whether the shot is successful depends on your intent. If you wanted to create an image that says "Florence" or "Italy", then I feel a stronger and more recognisable silhouette would help. Converseley if the intent is to show off a wonderful sky, then I'd say you've aced it :D

AdrianW (2241) 2008-05-09 12:07

Nice work Linas! You've taken this night shot at the perfect time IMO. I really like the colour contrast between the natural blue lighting, and the warm artificial light. The reflections balance and complement the buildings themselves too.

I can't quite decide whether I might be tempted to trim a little off the left hand side or not; I don't feel the short office building adds to the scene, but it is nice to have the final tower on the (if I remember rightly) station building.

One thing I would have a look for in the darkest RAW file is the detail on the clockface of the ?station, currently it's white, but I think you might be able to pull it back from the 4s exposure.

Overall, I like it! It's a very nice piece of work :D

AdrianW (2241) 2008-05-05 18:37

Nice shot Joni! You've captured the green-ness of the area well, the bridge makes a good focal point too.

There are a few things I'd consider adjusting if this were mine though. The main problem is the image quality itself, this presentation of your shot feels pixellated and lacking in resolution to me. I'm guessing you resized it from 640x480? If so, next time I suggest you just leave it at 640x480 and explain in your Note that the image was taken at that resolution. If it wasn't taken at 640x480 we need to work on your resizing process... Please let me know!

Also, it's minor, but the horizon feels slightly off to me. Try rotating it 1.4°CCW or so, and see whether you think it's an improvement.

As an aside, it's called the "Palladian Bridge" and Bath is in Somerset not Shropshire ;)