Your photos (116)


Hints and tips
by Philip Grosset



If you'd like to submit photos for criticism,
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with comments from Philip Grosset




"Hi, I've just been looking at your very well-done site and I was wondering what you might have to say about my own efforts. Here goes ... gulfshores1 - This particular beach (Gulf Shores, Alabama) gets an immense amount of strange things washing up, including tons of driftwood. I found this piece of wood on a gloomy, drizzly late afternoon. I was going strictly for atmosphere. The "thing" on the horizon is an oil platform.
uppertree.jpg - This was shot with a Holga camera in an effort to give it a slightly otherworldly look, to convey something of the tree's age and character.
wendywindow.jpg - Was trying to convey a feeling of depression or dislocation by showing the girl staring through a window at bright lights. Regards. (Ann Northcutt, Atlanta, Georgia USA)
I'm afraid I don't find this piece of driftwood all that arresting. The picture's grainy (deliberately so?) and isn't really sharp enough. A bolder composition, featuring the driftwood more prominently, perhaps showing more of the empty beach stretching away in the distance, might have helped.
Beach

Tree Tree rearranged
Your photo on the left might have communicated more of what you wanted if you'd come in closer to reveal more of the tree's surface. You could have taken another photo to show it in its setting, perhaps moving it slightly to one side, as shown on the right. The drop-offs at the lower corners produced by your cheap plastic Holga camera do succeed in concentrating attention on the tree, but I removed them from my version on the right as they no longer seemed so appropriate here.
Girl cropped
Girl at window
In your photo on the left, the girl seems to be staring into the dark window, not at the bright lights that are behind her. Move in closer, as on the right, and this concentrates more attention on her, and brings out her wistful expression. I like the way you included her reflection in the glass. I presume the soft focus effect was deliberate, but would have liked to have seen her face just a bit more clearly.
I feel that with this, and your other photos, you have had really good ideas, and been really imaginative, but haven't quite succeeded in communicating what you felt. Search a bit more for the most telling composition for each picture, and you'll be producing some really good photos.




"Give me your think." (Ngoc Hai Truong, Vietnam)
Man in chair
Man cliupped
Your photo on the left has your subject's head right in the middle of the picture, not, as I frequently suggest, often the best place for it. Why not move in closer, as in my version on the right, so that we can see him more clearly?
Room
The same comments apply! You really must decide whether you want a photo of the room or the people in it.

Man looking at camera
Building
Your photo on the left isn't in focus.but it might be improved by showing the man looking at flowers in front of him rather than just staring blankly at the camera.
Your photo on the right doesn't really show either the building or the people in the foreground sufficiently clearly. If you wanted to show them, it would have been much better to have got really close to them with just a glimpse of the building in the background - then, if you wanted, you could have taken a separate picture of it that did it justice (and did not show it leaning over as here!).

These are all points made elsewhere on this site. I suggest it might be worth your while to have a look at other pages - or at least the summary page that follows this one.

Reply from Hai Truong: "Thank for your help."




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