Your Photo: Our Critique

Michelle Winterstein submitted this image taken with a Canon Rebel XT, with an exposure of 1/125sec at f/4.0, ISO 1600. Michelle has cropped this from the original version with the drummer in the background. This is a very interesting photo. The red light hitting the front of the guitarist gives the image a graphic feel. A touch of curves would preserve the look of the image while accentuating the red. To clean up the background, consider cloning out the partial microphone. 

—Melissa Macatee
Contributing Blogger

This photo gets four 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!

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Comments

[troutmask]

Ok, really. THIS one is the worst photo that has ever been on here.

[Jason]

Wow - you guys continue to disappoint in your critiques. I don't know why I still subscribe to your RSS. It must be for the same reason folks slow down to look at car accidents.

[troutmask]

I agree. It really is like a car accident. A better sampling of photos would be if you just randomly picked them off of iphone snapshots posted to Twitter.

[Homer]

It's not the sampling of the pictures. It is the ratings that they get. Unfortunately the trend has spilled all over the Popular Photography printed version, whether in competition or even worse, "how to do it" assorted columns by "pros". It can't be that we are witnessing the end of photography, more likely a case of clueless staff. I gave up on their "expertise" in actual photography, when years ago they gave 1st prize in the Nature category to the most heavily photoshopped picture I have ever seen. So much altered, that it would make a nice sci-fi paper pack cover, or even fit in a motel wall. And that was for the "nature" category! My very long term subscription runs out in a few months and I have no intention to renew. Even their lab testing is so far off field photography, albeit the fact that EVERY new piece of equipment they test is always good! If that's the case, why all these photoshop changes in practically all the pictures we see? With all this technoloygy they pack in their cameras and lenses, why can't we take a picture the way we see it, and get a print as good as it looks on the camera monitor without checking the histograms (for whatever that too would be worth!)

[Randy Roberts]

Hmmm....I rather like this shot. I'd use curves to bring out the microphone a bit so we can more easily tell what it is -- it's a natural part of the stage clutter that one would expect in a band shot. Apart from the head of the guitar being cut off, I'd say "well done," Michelle.

[Homer]

Oh, yes, the picture! I basically agree with Randy Roberts, especially bringing out the microphone "so we can more easily tell what it is". Generally (with some exceptions of course) I see photography as an expression of the obvious primarily, before venturing into the "what it may be" or "what does the artist trying to say" territory. After all the picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words!