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I had a great day last Sunday and took heaps of photos but am struggling a bit with getting them to look 'right'! Here are some that stood out for me subject-wise but I think still need some work:

Fishing




Solitary




Up for a chat?



Looking at the preview they look a bit grey which is kind of moody for the first one, not too sure about the second.

Anyway, thanks for looking, comments and advice appreciated!


Cheers, Elena

Looks like you didn't have any luck with the light that day... however you seemed to have handled it well.. I really liked the first two... although the second would have been more appealing if the subject was on the other side of the frame (so he somewhere to go to rather than out of the frame - does that make sense?).. the first one is my favourite.. and I hope you don't mind but I had a little play with it .. if it bothers you let me know and I'll remove it straight away.. I just applied the hollywood filter (in virtual photographer - a free photoshop plugin that you can download off the net).. and cropped it.. the halo aound the subject bothers me but thats just because its a small file..

It is never a problem to experiment with my images!
I like what you have done with the first one, the boat is more prominent now and looks a lot better.

With the second, I know it is 'bad' to have subjects 'leaving' an image but I thought maybe because the trail he was carving through the water was still visible and part of him it would kind of work but I guess not.

Thanks for your comments!

Louie wrote:With the second, I know it is 'bad' to have subjects 'leaving' an image but I thought maybe because the trail he was carving through the water was still visible and part of him it would kind of work but I guess not.

You know.. there are all these 'rules' with photography... the rule of thirds.. the one about leaving room in the frame etc.. we've all heard them time and time again..

The thing is while generally its good to follow these 'rules' sometimes the image will work better if you ignore them.. photography is an art.. its our own interpretation of what we see and if the photographer likes it (and it isnt a paid job) then thats good enough.. and even though that shot doesn't fully work for me it doesn't mean that its not a good image or that others won't like it.. thats just my own pesonal opinion..

I like the subjects but the light seems very flat, maybe you could increase the contrast and go black and white?

Love the isolation and tranquility of the first two. If you want to increase the contrast, use the curve adjustment in pshop. The basic way is to create a curve in the shape of a tilted S. From left to right, it controls the shadows to highlights of the image respectively.



The purple tinge looks like it's due to the filter as you picked up the other day.

PiroStitch wrote:The purple tinge looks like it's due to the filter as you picked up the other day.

Anything is possible ...


Thanks so much for the curve demo, it all makes a lot more sense when I can see what people are talking about, to me anyway!
It does look more like what I was aiming for now and is probably more like what potato1 is getting at.


And thank you also for your comments