Your Photo: Our Critique
Valerie Holden submitted this photo taken with a Canon 50D, with an exposure of 1/80sec at f/3.5, ISO 100. What Valerie has accomplished is a nice looking pan shot, meaning she moved the camera along just enough while the boy jumped out of the swing, that he is sharp and the background has a slight blur, giving the image the feel of motion. The tilt of the scene really adds to the image. I would suggest some fine tuning to tighten up the photo. Consider cropping the top just to rid the image of the overblown sky and darker rooftop. This will leave some space above his head and will help to clean up the background. Also crop in from the right a bit, but be sure to leave some space for him to move through. With his backward glance toward the camera, the photo doesn’t need quite as much negative space and this will also move our flying boy out of the center. Also, to really add some pop to the image you could adjust your levels. Move the black point in just to the edge of the histogram and apply the unsharpen mask. This will separate him from his background even more. A nice little snapshot turns into a top notch photo with a little digital adjustment.
—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger
This photo gets three and a half stars on the PopPhoto Flash rating system.
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!
Want us to critique your shots? Send 'em to us!
Is it possible to post a smaller photo for us to review the critique? Also, please make sure to resize the browser window to match that incredibly small photo. I'm not working on anything else at the moment and I LOVE it when sites resize my windows.
I cannot comment on the critique because the original image is so small, that the preview on this page is fuzzy from being stretched out.
Posted by: Allen | July 14, 2009 at 03:10 PM
Really? How can we tell that the subject is in focus? On the posted image, it's extremely blurry....perhaps due to terrible compression, resizing and god knows what else. Good job, especially for a PHOTOGRAPHY magazine.
Posted by: torgeaux | July 14, 2009 at 05:20 PM
Well, after all it is the worst photography magazine in the market. The most commercial magazine with the least amount of art.
Posted by: Steamboat | July 16, 2009 at 01:11 AM
3.5 stars...Really. This photo is horrible!!!
Posted by: brad | July 16, 2009 at 11:52 AM
Honestly, I have to agree in principle with the previous commenters, this photo in general should rate 2 stars or less for far too many reasons. While I understand the intent of the photographer and I agree with the critique itself, the quality of the image alone should have merited a bye--or at least the recommendation that the photographer practice panning. You really can't tell whether the entire image is a victim of motion blur or if it's somewhat out of focus as well.
It also doesn't help that it's such a tiny image that appears to be a grossly-compressed JPG which has sacrificed probably 75% or more of the image data.
Don't get me wrong, the photographer's intent was good and it was an excellent attempt at a very difficult shot, but it is not good enough to warrant submission even to these august professionals. It makes me wonder what they would have to say about one of my latest images.
Posted by: Vulpine | July 16, 2009 at 12:00 PM
I would like to say; "Thank you to all the previous commentators. You really got onto Melissa, like I've been doing ever since I start posting critiques." She is terrible, so PopPhoto if your interested in having a professional critique site look me up, you have my email address.
To Valerie nice try but you missed it. Next time use a slower shutter speed, say 1/30 or slower. I would guess with a 1/80 you had no intention of a "pan" photo. It just so happened that is what you auto set it to. Other than that I would agree with Melissa on the things you should do to bring this image from a 1 star to a possible 3.
Posted by: Justin | July 16, 2009 at 02:49 PM
I'd crop tighter on the right side of the picture. Also, I wonder what the effect would be if you lost the swing altogether and just had a tight shot of the kid in mid air leaving it to the viewer's imagination how he got there.
Posted by: D.Smyth | July 16, 2009 at 10:11 PM
This only show the level of Melissa photography skills. My 5 years old son can do better than her.
Posted by: Don izman | July 17, 2009 at 01:45 AM