Kalahari Danceby
LynnSComment by Artifacts: Positives:
This image shows the simplicity of African life very well. Strong silhouettes of the children and adults captures a moment of play and the background sky contributes to the overall feeling.
Technicals:
Solid dark silhouettes. It appears there are foreground grasses that are out of focus; due in part because of shooting at f/3.2. The out of focus grasses act as a viewer distraction. The composition is unbalanced with the people clustered on the left side. There is a lot of dead image space both on the far right and the top that contributes little to the composition as a whole. Sharpness, which is critical in silhouette images, is OK but could be crisper. The sky is on the dull side compared to what it could be.
This image has a very unusual luminosity curve. It has three spikes on the right side, one for each RGB color, that is not expected and highly unusual. Also, the luminosity curve is severely truncated on the right side. That should never happen. It has a large luminosity spike on the far left typical of silhouette compositions, but that is expected and not at issue.
I suspect the unusual luminosity curve resulted either from underexposing the picture, some sort of camera settings and/or from post processing. I suspect the spikes resulted from post processing though I don't know how. You were probably adjusting sky color or trying to make the silhouettes blacker.
The Challenge:
The average score in the challenge was 5.44. You placed 24th out of 87 submissions with a score of 5.7. By DPC standards that is above average and most likely is because of the silhouettes. Though it was taken at a multi-cultural event that is not apparent to casual voters and that may have held down the score slightly.
Suggestions:
There are a number of technical changes that could be applied to this image to enhance the silhouettes:
1-A simple levels adjustment would add considerable brightness and color to the background sky. Just drag the rightmost white triangle left to touch the luminosity curve. That is a standard levels adjustment. The sky will become much brighter and its color much richer with just that simple adjustment. You can also make the silhouette "blacker" by simply dragging the middle triangle to the right a little. It will also add color to the sky.
2-Crop the image different. Make it a much tighter crop on the people. They are your main subject and you should devote as much image real estate to them as possible. Crop off the top and left sides of the image. It will improved balance, better highlight the people and get rid of some of the distracting out of focus grasses at the same time.
3-If shot at a higher f/number than f/3.2 you would have greater depth of field and could get better focus in the remaining foreground grasses. Your shutter speed was 1/450th so you had room to work with to increase your depth of field while still having a fast enough shutter speed to get stop action.
4-Sharpen for a sharper edge to the silhouettes without adding haloing. Sharpening is an artform that has to be studied and practiced.
Your picture would not have scored so well if it weren't good to start with. The above suggestions will just highlight its best features more, that is all.
Photographer found comment helpful.
