Critiques….or thoughts?
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Here are three images I shot on our recent trip to Tennessee. We had just had a fast and furious 45 minutes of trout fishing, and then the water started rising, so we had to get out. I grabbed the camera and we went back down to take a few shots. Honestly, these were kind of quick shots, the water was coming up so we had limited time, and it was around noon, so the light was pretty harsh, but I went ahead and worked with the shots just to see. More of a training exercise.
Any thoughts or constructive critiques?
I think they’re a little dull to be honest.
The first doesn’t really give me a great idea of where we’re at and is neither a good shot of the canoe or the river.
The second is better for that and gives me sense of the river and that we’re fishing, but the boat is a little far away and IMHO it could have been a tighter shot.
The last one has two problems (again, IMHO) the first is that the angler looks bored and isn’t doing anything and the second is the horizon runs to close to her head and that makes her stand out less.
All the exposures and color look good for midday shots and work well together..
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
David,
Thanks for your comments. I agree as far as the subject matter being dull compositionaly. The third picture was of my wife, and it was like “here, hold my fly rod, and look over there”. I think I will be much better served, if I can treat this like wildlife and landscapes, and just step back and shoot pictures of people doing what they love, and just staying out of the way. One of my challenges is going to be getting on the water with seasoned anglers who “have the look, skill, and passion” and then capturing that. Good point about her head and the horizon, I hadn’t really noticed that.
The middle shot was actually cropped a little bit from the origional. It was a rushed shot, the guide boat was leaving and I didn’t have time to grab my zoom and do it right…..that pretty much says it right there. I thought about cropping it tighter in post process, but figured if I did so the image quality would be useless. How much tighter would you crop it?
In the canoe shot, I wish it had shown more of the river in the background as well. What would you do to make the canoe shot better? Are you thinking of something like maybe getting closer to the front of the canoe to make it fill most of the image, sweeping across the image diagonaly….maybe using a shallow DOF from front to back?
Honestly, I felt very scattered that day and trying to shoot fly fishing is new for me. It seems that you mentioned, or put into words, many of the things that were nagging at me….(and some I didn’t see). I am glad you thought the color and lighting were o.k.
Back to the drawing board….
I too think the second is the best out of the group, aside from the over exposed sky. You could have benefited from a ND grad filter. The subject seems a little soft, but that could be from compression/scaling for web.
The first one has a good concept, but could be better with a more dynamic background. As it is now, it is a little boring. To me, the photo serves as a memento from being on the trip. Your viewers weren’t on the trip, so they do not have an emotional tie to the photo. Therefore you need to make the photo a bit more interesting to look at.
Got to love the green scenery along southern tailwaters in the summer!http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramChad,
Thanks for the comments. I need to work more on using a graduated ND filter. I have one and never use it. That is something I am hoping to remember to start using more. Sometimes, I have a hard time “seeing” that I need to use a gaduated ND filter. Most times the circular polarizer works great, but not always.
I agree that maybe if the canoe was on a shore of a scenic alpine lake with mountains and a gorgeous background to carry it, that might have worked.
I think in planning an outing, I am really going to have to concentrate and either go out on a shoot with other anglers and shoot photography first and foremost, or just fish and have the camera just in case for opportunites that may present themselves.
You are right, they are more mementos of the trip, which is fine. One thing I was trying to work on with the third shot was using the fill flash, in harsh light. These are definitely not photos I would consider submitting to anyone, but was just curious what everyone’s thoughts were.
Thanks for the input.
Far be it for me to critique when my own work still leaves room for improvement..especially landscapes.
Two things on the canoe shot.
1) Try to level the horizon, when first viewed I wanted to tilt my head.
2) Dunno, this is a guess but faced with a subject that I wanted to highlight with a mundane or busy background Id have opened the lens wide and tried to throw the BG way oof. Would it have helped here, dunno…you could select the Canoe and apply some gausian blur to give you and idea. At the very east it would deemphasise the surroundings, isolate the canoe and thus draw our eyes to it, and quite possibly hold them there.First of all, John, your work always looks amazing! I enjoy viewing it.
Interesting on the horizon… Actually, the horizon is level, if you look at the bottoms of the clouds and the top of the photo. But, I see what you mean. I think it may be an optical ilusion with the tilting of the canoe, and the way the water is in a back channel (but looks slanted), and the right ridgeline of trees is taller than on the left. If I had tilted the camera slightly to balance those features, then the clouds would have been crooked. If I had taken a better image compositionaly, all of this would have probably taken care of itself.
First of all, John, your work always looks amazing! I enjoy viewing it.
Thanks but have you seen me display many landscape/enviroment shots? 😉
Re the “Horizon”. Thats more along the lines of what I meant, not neccessarily the actual horizon. Theres a very noticable right to left slant throughout. Dont quite know how to put it in words but I almost want to fall off the left. A slight crop (just a bit) designed to flatten it, or the straiten tool in ACR, might ease that sensation.
Check to see if your camera has a grid mode for the viewfinder… this is probably one of my favorite additions that comes free with DSLR’s… without having to buy a new viewfinder or prism you just turn it on and you get little grid lines right there…
Quote: “Re the “Horizon”. Thats more along the lines of what I meant, not neccessarily the actual horizon. Theres a very noticable right to left slant throughout. Dont quite know how to put it in words but I almost want to fall off the left.”
Yeah, I see what you mean, John. It’s more of a ‘feeling’ as you look at the picture. I was kneeling to take this picture, so the main river on the right is hidden behind the islands and grass. I may have been holding the camera a little off as well 😛
Good input guys.
John, when shooting anglers it really helps to be shooting people who don’t mind, and have some skill at posing.
(are we not a bunch of posers anyway ?www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
The images were taken at Happy Hollow on the Caney Fork River in Middle Tennessee. I cropped in the second image some more and sharpened a little bit more. For what its worth, I also rotated the first image with the canoe to see if it helps the horizon issue……not that it helps the dull composition :-[ Below are the new images. Does this crop of the raft and fishermen look better?
I thought that was Happy Hollow. That log has been in the same spot for a long time! It’s been about 5 years, if not more, since I’ve been there, and it looks the same.
For some reason your other photos are coming up as protected and are not showing for me now.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramThe canoe shot looks much better. There isn’t that sense of vertigo in it. They angles of the terrain made the slant look much worse than it was.
The guide boat crop is nice. You might want to e-mail it to the fisherman in the boat. That is a rough looking backcast! 🙂
Yeah, I was hoping for a better back cast! They were just random guys on the river. I’m going to look for guys that can cast well and fish, and take it from there. I have a few guys in mind to ask if I could tag along as a photographer if they wouldn’t mind me taking some pics. I think that will be the best way to do it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a regular group of fishing buddies and usualy fish alone…..which is kind of counterproductive to fly fishing photography ;D
I’ll keep trying and post some more images in the future, …images that I think are really good.
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