Your Photo: Our Critique

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After

Botanical Garden submitted by Meg
Speaking as someone who’s photographed at the Botanical Garden, I think she could have gotten a much more interesting shot. The photo is basically composed of two pictures. Pick one subject, either the tree or the flowers and concentrate on that. Also, the horizon line should follow the rule of thirds and not cut the photo in half. The colors are nice but since the exposure is so light, it’s hard to see them. I would dark the mid-tones and add contrast to give it a more three-dimensional feeling. 
—Linzee Karasik
Art/Production Assistant

This photo gets 3 stars on the PopPhoto Flash rating system. At least there’s something to improve upon.

The PopPhoto Flash rating system.
*= This part of the camera is called the lens
**= Don’t quit your day job
***= Good, but not yet great
****=So close you can taste it
*****= Yes, a thousand times yes!

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Comments

[Craig]

The left-hand side of your crop is far more interesting than the right, with nice color and depth. Why not crop further and get rid of the right-hand side?

[xan]

throw a person in the right hand foreground of the frame and u have a much more interesting photo- forget cropping

[xan]

throw a person in the right hand foreground of the frame and u have a much more interesting photo- forget cropping

[xan]

throw a person in the right hand foreground of the frame and u have a much more interesting photo- forget cropping

[David]

An opinion so nice, they said it thrice!

[DaveInAZ]

I hate the cropped version. It's dark, dismal, and boring. Why would you crop out ALL the flowers???? The sight of naked dirt offends you? Fine. Crop in from the right and up from the bottom, but leave as many flowers as you can. There may still be a hint of dirt showing, but now it's just "dirt cleavage", rather than "dirt porn".

[Denis]

Why crop at all just fix the colors and cover the dirt pile with flowers with photoshop, darken the tree branches and in the end it's a pretty good shot ... if you're a botanist.

[Luca]

Wow Linzee, you managed to turn a boring shot into a horrible one.
I would give maybe two starts (as encouragement) to the original photo and zero to your crop.
Some photos can be fixed, other need to re-taken.
I would have lowered myself closer to the ground and have some flower fill more of the lower frame.
Otherwise as a quick fix on the original photo boost the saturation and fill the dirt spot with clones flowers.
The rule of thirds doesn't have to be followed every time literally.

[Meg]

Thank you all for your comments :) I do agree with Davids comment and will crop from the right and keep the flowers.