Practice Critiques!

Since we will be doing critiques at the upcoming workshop in Georgia, I  thought it might be fun to critique one of my own shots to give you and idea what happens in a critique!  First of all I shot this mess, so I will critique it just like any other critique!!!  Here goes:

“The photographer saw a very beautiful scene and for the most part captured it well.  The exposure is very good, colors are attractive and well saturated, but a lot of things are distracting.  Let’s take a look at them.  Number 1, In the upper left hand corner we have something sticking into the frame, not large enough to identify, it just pulls our attention away from the scene. Number 2, an ugly tree limb not only sticks out into the scene, it also merges with the boat, it just feels messy. Numbers 3 & 4 are more plants sticking into the frame, if they were smaller and less intrusive they might not have been as big a problem, but unfortunately they dominate the right side of the frame and block our view of a pretty scene.  So how could we have handled this better?  One thing would be to step up into the scene to eliminate the stuff on the right (3 & 4)   Next is to always do Border Patrol, look around the borders and make sure nothing is sticking into the frame that is distracting.  The photographer used a polarizer which is good and it worked making the colors richer, and the overall idea for the scene was nice.  The horizon was around the upper third line and that is good too.  This is a great example of nice effort that fell short, because of just too much clutter!!!  It’s a shame too, because this is a great scene!“

So that’s how we do it.  Can’t wait to see a lot of the work people bring to the event!  The reason critiques are so valuable is that we all make the same fifteen or twenty mistakes, the more we recognize them and learn what to do,  the less we will make those common mistakes.  Never be afraid to hear a critique it will only make you a stronger photographer!

the pilgrim

Tomorrow I will try to shoot his again and post it here hopefully, I will do a better job!

Update:  Stuck my head out this morning to see about remaking the shot and noticed the white fishing boat had left during the night!  When the light is better I will make another attempt,  but this is a valuable lesson, you can’t always count on shooting the same scene later, things change!!!!

The image was made at 4:07 p.m. yesterday, so I will wait for that light and see what is possible, the fishing boat may even be back???? 

O.K. better but still not perfect!