Thanks for your comments. Sorry I didn't respond sooner, but being fairly new to DPChallenge, I did not see your critique until this morning. I do appreciate the feedback, since the only way to improve my photography is to get some constructive criticism.
This was a candid shot, and I agree with your comment that the photo would have been better with a shallower DOF. A while back, I had gotten into the habit of shooting virtually everything with a large aperature with the result of often having key elements out of focus. My guess is that on this shot, I had purposely closed the aperature to capture all the kids in focus. I need to be more aware of DOF considerations.
Thanks again for your time and comments.
Mike
Originally posted by FrankRobinson:
Hi Mike,
Welcome to the Critique Zone! Please remember that this is all entirely subjective...
Technicals
It's a nice, sharp photo and fairly clear. You have all the key points in focus etc. However, given your proven skill in managing the DOF I am surprised that you did not go for a shallower DOF to bring my eye onto the kids and blur out the background which is not that interesting. While there is generally plenty of light, I also would (20/20 hindsight!) have used a little fill flash to light up your grand-daughter's face a little and kill off that unfortunate shadow.
Artistic
I would guess that this is a candid snapshot from the look of it, which is fine as far as it goes but for me the composition doesn't quite work - I find that cutting off the edges of the bodies is a little visually uncomfortable. I would suggest either capturing the entire body or focusing in more tightly and really making me focus on their faces and the great expressions of interest and playing. Perhaps moving away and using your 70-210 racked out to blur out the background and tighten in the field of view?
Overall, it definitely fits the challenge and, as a candid, works quite well but I think that driving the viewers focus more specifically could have resulted in a truly great shot here.
Welcome to the Critique Zone! Please remember that this is all entirely subjective...
Technicals
It's a nice, sharp photo and fairly clear. You have all the key points in focus etc. However, given your proven skill in managing the DOF I am surprised that you did not go for a shallower DOF to bring my eye onto the kids and blur out the background which is not that interesting. While there is generally plenty of light, I also would (20/20 hindsight!) have used a little fill flash to light up your grand-daughter's face a little and kill off that unfortunate shadow.
Artistic
I would guess that this is a candid snapshot from the look of it, which is fine as far as it goes but for me the composition doesn't quite work - I find that cutting off the edges of the bodies is a little visually uncomfortable. I would suggest either capturing the entire body or focusing in more tightly and really making me focus on their faces and the great expressions of interest and playing. Perhaps moving away and using your 70-210 racked out to blur out the background and tighten in the field of view?
Overall, it definitely fits the challenge and, as a candid, works quite well but I think that driving the viewers focus more specifically could have resulted in a truly great shot here.
One of my favorite type of newspaper assignments is to capture "wild art", which is defined as "Stand-Alone, Feature Shot, Enterprise art are found moments that are intended to be realistic slices of everyday life" (definition taken from this glossary). These are typically images that caption themselves, not needing a lot of words to get their point across. For this challenge, I'm scoring images as whether I'd like to see them on the front page of a paper as feel good wild art. If I don't think they would make the paper, I'm then asking myself, "does it make me feel good?" If it doesn't do much for me, well then, oh well...
Nice moment. If anything, I would have cropped maybe 15% of the wasted space off the top.
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