Photo critique
I have been taking lots of photos lately since I received a Canon Rebel 35mm camera for Christmas and have really dug in to the Flickr community. One of my favorite features is the combination of comments and the groups you can join where you get honest feedback about your photos to help you improve. Sometimes the comments are really unhelpful and say things like "boring" without explaining what they would have done differently. I have tried really hard to add as much value on my comments to not just say "I hate it" or "I love it" and mention good and bad points.
I would really like to try my hand at stock photography and came across a site called dpchallenge.com which offers regular challenges to shoot on a given topic and hence broaden your horizons as a photographer. I found a great comment from a member called fotomann_forever where he broke the comment down to the key elements of critique. I have reproduced it here from a critique of a cool Rubics Cube photo in an 80s challenge for future reference.
First Impression - the most important one:
It
is a good image and stands apart from all the other Rubik's Cube photos
in that it is torn apart ... something I quickly learned to do ;-)
Composition:
Pretty
strong. I like the fact that the in focus parts are in the positions
they are in. However, I think that using two blocks in the foreground
has crowded the composition a bit.
Subject:
Clean, clear crisp and stands out welll.
Technical (Colour, focus, and light):
Colour- White balance seems to be a bit warm. But, overall colour is good.
Focus - Sharp and good use of DoF.
Light - No harsh shadows, evenly lit. Pretty good, but somewhat flat.
To grow its vote?:
The
Rubik's seems to have been an obvious choice for this challenge. In
that, you may have gotten quite a few votes that were low, because
voters had seen too many Rubik's Cubes. Also, strenthen up that
composition just a little.
Summary:
Pretty good photo, definitely not a bad photo.