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03/02/2010 11:59:05 AM |
Greetings from the Critique Club
First Impressions:
As mentioned in your comments, it is really far too dark.
Technical (Comp, lighting, color, focus, Processing):
As far as the exposure issue I believe the commenters covered that pretty well so I will go over the other technical aspects.
The composition on this is fine, I like how you didn’t center the main subject however there is a lot of open space and a lot going on that I feel takes away from the main subjects. I would suggest getting in close to the people and really filling most of the frame with them. This setup is great to use for story telling but between the landscape, fishing hole, rods and sled it is a bit much. Perhaps center on the 2 people just walking in the snow or the older person pulling the kid on the sled or even kneeling down together holding a fishing rod.
Challenge:
Meets the challenge well and will relate well with those with children/grandchildren.
Artistic/Emotion:
This had the potential for a great emotion shot but unfortunately fell flat.
Summary:
The biggest thing that hurt you was the exposure. This would have probably been a solid 5 if properly exposed. But you live and learn and now you can only go up (hopefully) Keep practicing and having fun and enter as much as you can and you will learn and grow. There are many great resources on the internet about exposure and learning to use a digital camera that are excellent. And if you ever have questions you can always stop by the forums and someone will likely be able to help you out.
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02/19/2010 11:44:08 AM |
What Waddy says is correct. Bright snow, water and sand can completely fool an auto exposure system, because it does not know that the scene really IS that bright and it is trying to make a normal exposure out of it.
There is no substitute for getting a shot right in the camera, but there ARE some things you can do in post processing to help save such an exposure. I took a screen grab of your entry and did a levels adjustment on it.
What this adjustment does is it allows you to tell it what the brightest and darkest levels are in the image and then stretches the dynamic range of the image to match. If you look at the left hand thumbnail in this levels dialog (Your original image), you can see that the histogram is totally flat on the right side, which is the lighter tones. I then set the highlights slider (the white diamond shape) to match up with the brightest point for which the histogram shows there is detail. You can see the expected result in the righthand thumbnail preview. I went and pasted the after histogram into this so that you can see what the histogram looks like after the adjustment. The dynamic range has now been expanded to fill the available range, which lightens up the image and making the details more visible.
I also applied a modest amount of tonemapping using PaintShop Pro's clarify adjustment in order to bring out a little more detail from the dark figures, and then sharpened the photo a bit.
Hope this helps some.
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02/17/2010 03:13:58 AM |
The camera's automatic metering system is trying to create a neutral grey (18% luminosity) average brightness overall for the whole scene in the image, which is about what this image shows. Neutral grey is a pretty dark grey.
To get well exposed shots in snow or on the beach, you have to set the camera EV (exposure value) setting to +1 or +2. There may also be a "scene" setting for beach or snow shooting that you can use. Check in your camera manual.
Don't be afraid to experiment with the camera's settings. You can always go back to full automatic. |
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 Photographer found comment helpful. |
Comments Made During the Challenge  |
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02/16/2010 03:37:30 PM |
| I find this rather too dark |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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02/14/2010 02:09:45 PM |
| This image is exceptionally dark on my montior, which makes it hard to pick out all the details. In particular, the father and son in the image as extremely dark which doesn't help when they should be the subject |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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02/12/2010 12:30:13 PM |
| Good idea but my eye is drawn away by the only light area in the photo the distant hill. |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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02/11/2010 10:10:59 AM |
| Too dark. Snow's supposed to be white. I think I'm perceiving a spot on your sensor as well. |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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02/11/2010 07:15:33 AM |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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02/10/2010 09:06:44 PM |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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02/10/2010 04:03:27 PM |
| glad to see you turtle. gotta love grandkids |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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02/10/2010 02:46:58 PM |
| snow makes it difficult to take pictures - the overall concept is good but the image is too dark |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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02/10/2010 12:17:46 AM |
| Very dark image - I can't see faces or expressions. |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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