I'm putting myself up for public display and critique! Please take a look through my photo gallery. I'm looking for any kind of feedback, good or bad. All these photos were taken with my Canon S100 2mp Digital Elph camera.

http://www.pyroglyphfilms.com/gallery/index2.shtml

Thanks, Dylan. I'll go have a look.

Okay, I had a look. Dylan, you have talent.

I like the Dobermans. Dobermen?

Hey Dylan,

There's some nice shots in there mate. I like your dog, I had a doberman when I was a kid and it was one of the best dogs I've ever had. Super friendly and loyal, but weighed twice as much as me so he had no problem taking me down when ever I was playing with him.

Looking great Dylan! It seems like you, Chris and myself all own
the same digital camera. Heh. How 'bout that!

Thanks guys.

Any feedback on specific photos? Can you pick out the best 3 or 4 for me? Overall impressions? I'm trying to get more into photography, so I'll take any criticism I can get.

I own an S100 too--although I just today replaced it with an S400, while also buying a D10 and lenses. Big photo day!

Not that I want to sound like I just walked in and bought them--it's been months of looking and thinking, and finally diving in thanks to a "sales tax free" event plus some amazing discounts at a local camera store. Can't wait to start snapping!

Nice pix Dylan. I like the sun flare over the water. If I had a criticism, it would be that there is a tendency towards too much headroom in some of the portraiture for my taste. Plus, you might want to play around with the compositions a bit more--shifting the weight of the subjects away from the center. For instance: people, animals, objects #1, the girl with the blue eyes, is a strong, interesting frame, while #6 of the gent in the kimono is somewhat less interesting. By cropping the top frame down to nearly resting on his head, he will seem more powerful. Also it might have been better to have rotated around him so that the sidelight had become more of an edge light; this would have put more of his face in shadow and thus been more mysterious and strong.

Composition is absolutely in the eye of the beholder, so it's more than likely that the next person might disagree with me. I certainly had a few disagreements with my photo teacher in college. "That composition doesn't do much for me" he said. "Really? It works for me. Maybe we just have different taste" I said. And then I quit college. Then again, I was a punk-ass kid and he was probably right...!

I actually have the S200, but it's all more or less the same. Great
camera's at the size. I imagine you take the S100/400 with you
everywhere as well Charles? Is the S400 the one with the 3x
optical zoom? That's nice to have.

I liked the following photos the most: the girl nightie shot,
boy by the fire, sun over the water, weird tree against blue sky,
harbor shot with fog(?).

Ok I found two,

The Lexus. This car has some interesting lines, maybe instead of a bit of a 'happy snap' you could have explored the design and shape of the car a bit more. "Less is more" according to Picasso and it's good to let people use their imaginations. On the exposure side the side of the car is totally blown out which also adds to the 'happy snappyness' of the shot. With digital still cams you really have to pay attention to range just like with video.

The Grouse/Syprus? lift. Good composition but bad timing. The shot look a little bland and uninteresting colourwise, it's a bit flat and the snow looks grey. The clouds are nice and I can see your idea but 30mins before sunset probably would have produced a more spectacular shot. Probabley 90% of landscape photography is about being in the right place at the right time, when all the natural elements come together. This is why landscape pros will spend a whole day, sometimes weeks, in one place waiting for the 'magic shot'.

Ah! Excellent. This is the stuff I'm looking for guys. Thanks.

Charles, thanks for pointing that out. I always knew somehting was off with that photo #6. Thats one thing I will watch from now on.

Adrian, the Lexus was totally a "happy snap" :) I was just walking by it and snapped that one without thinking about where I exposed the picture. THat's something else I will watch in the future.

The Cypress lift is one of my favorite pictures. If you like something enough, you don't notice what is wrong with it, which is why I need feedback. I agree with what you are saying. Is there anything I can do with Photoshop to punch this picture up a little without making it look manipulated?

You couuld try setting the white point in the 'Levels' to try and whiten the snow a little. Then you might be able to fine tune the saturation to punch the sky up a little. Or, go riding again and reshoot the shot. Personally I'd be reshooting, one, because I wouldn't be happy with trying to make the shot better, and two, another day riding!!!

I'm going riding...


R I G H T ....
NOW!!

:D

Doh!!! I havae to wait until the weekend and now it looks like it might be raining on Saturday. Sunday is supposed to be fine and sunny but Sunday means ski's/board on...check, leave brain and common sense in car...check, ride around like I'm the only person on the mountain...check.

Here's how my day went...
8am, get picked up by riding buddy.
9:30am, get to Cypress mountain.
10am, first warm up run.
10:20am, second warm up run.
10:40am first difficult run.
11am 2nd difficult run.
11:06am, riding buddy wipes out going over a small jump. Land on his shoulder, starts groaning in pain.
11:30am, First Aid building, buddy has dislocated shoulder, they can't get it back in.
noon- leave Cypress
The rest of the day went something like:
Get him to medical clinic, the doctor dislocated it again accidently (it had relocated while driving home), then to the hospital for X-rays, and blah blah, turns out he fractured the bone that the arm bone (whatever its called) goes into. Yay!
Could have been worse, could have been me! :)
Anyway, back to the regularily scheduled thread.

Dylan,

One of my mantras is “you can teach technique but you can not teach talent”, you certainly have talent.

This is not a criticism but a general suggestion. Angle is everything. I rarely take a picture standing up with the camera at eye level. I stand on chairs, lay on the ground, use Dutch angles when appropriate etc.

For example, dog running (cool shot) and dog on beach, Those would be from ground level.

Lexus and a few others? You have posted these on your business web site, it does not matter what camera you used many of them look absolutely professional. I would be cautious however, about posting your snap shots on a site that is representing your professional image making.

Steve

Thanks Steven!

What can I say, the waves were rolling in and I didn't want to get wet... :) OK, no excuses, I really just didn't think about it at the time.

Any suggestions as to which I should take down?

Dylan,

Sugest which ones to take down, no. Even though a few are obvious to me, Charles already said it, beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder, I have learned every viewer will interpret every image a little or a lot differently. I have been shooting for fifteen years:

There has been days when I thought I was spot on and could not wait to lay the stuff down in front of the client and they thought my stuff was garbage.

There has been days when I was off and did not want to see the client and they thought the work was amazing. I’ve learned it can be that subjective.

I have learned I am a photographer, not an art director. Editors and art directors rarely pick the photos I think they are going to or the ones I wish they would. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised by what they did with the shot, sometimes I am embarrassed and don’t understand why they picked one of my “poor” shots, the answer is subjectivity. As long as they are happy it is just my ego getting in the way, it all pays the same.

Your portfolio is one of the few things YOU have control over, and it is always assumed that you have cherry picked the best you can display. A potential client may pick what they think is your weakest shot and decide if that is an acceptable level of quality and creativity for them. Hence my use of the word caution.

Steve

Charles,

Congratulations on your 10D. What lenses did you get?

Dylan,
One more thing, I have had only had 2 real careers in my life, firefighter/medic and photographer. That means if my buddy falls down and dislocates his shoulder while I am skiing with him I will have to take the shot of him writhing in pain first, and then treat him :) Did you get the shot?

Steve

<<<-- Originally posted by Steven Digges : Dylan,
One more thing, I have had only had 2 real careers in my life, firefighter/medic and photographer. That means if my buddy falls down and dislocates his shoulder while I am skiing with him I will have to take the shot of him writhing in pain first, and then treat him :) Did you get the shot?

Steve -->>>

What kind of sick freak do you think I am?
OF COURSE I GOT THAT SHOT!!! :)

And here it is! (http://www.pyroglyphfilms.com/ebaypics/IMG_7764sm.jpg)

Although not really writhing in pain, he's trying to pop his shoulder back in in this picture. It didn't work.

Dylan,

I was literally sitting here writing this reply wondering if you were offended by my joke about your friend in pain when your response came in and made me laugh. If he was my friend he would be hearing a lot of jokes about taking himself out on the bunny hill too.

Post as I wrote it before you replied.

Just as imagery can be interpreted in different ways, so can a few written lines. I sometimes wonder how my input is interpreted here at DV Info. Of course, I was joking about taking a picture of someone in pain before treating him. And I should have honored your request for input instead of harping about how subjective interpretation of an image is.

So here goes a few impressions:
People, animals, objects
#4 beach photographer – snapshot, poor exposure
#15 Lexus – snapshot

Landscapes
#2 does nothing for me, probably because it is a shot almost anyone can take.
#3 same thing
#8 Clouds can be spectacular, if you IMHO are going to show a shot of them they should be spectacular, not just interesting
#10 Bent over skier at bottom takes too much away from this shot, crop it and you won’t have enough snow.
#17 powerlines & sky, I don’t like it at all
#25 lift shadow, perfect example of what I mentioned in post above. I’m sure some people think it’s cool. I hate it. But that’s the old school, anal, redneck artist that I can be. If the snow was sharp and the shadow was blurred by it’s motion I would think it was a great shot, but since the whole thing is out of focus it just looks like a mistake that someone thought came out cool, remember, always claim you do those on purpose and then they become ART.
#27 & #28 put them in your scrapbook

I wish I had the time to tell you all that I see that is done well in some of the others (I should be editing right now) instead of just the negative stuff. Now I probably have made you mad.

Gotta go.

Steve

PS Feel free to shoot back, there is a photo gallery on my web page. I don’t practice all that I preach. Most of the images are more than 5 years old. Updating the whole thing is on my long and never ending to-do list.

Steven

I removed the bent over skiier from #10, I could remove the other as well. Take a look.

The photographer on the beach in #4 is actually me. Someone else took that shot. Probably just my vanity that put it up. No one seems to like the Lexus, and I understand why. I'll probably take it down shortly.

I agree #2 and #3 are fairly "meh". Sometimes it doesn't sink in until someone else says it.


#17 with the powerlines in the sky is actualy shot off the reflection in a car window. I like the look it has, but wonder if it would be better without the powerlines. I took them out.


#25, with the chair lift shadow, it isn't sharp because I had my digicam set it low res, and with only 2x zoom, I had to crop it a lot to get that picture, so it's lost all its "clean-ness" through that. The original picture is much nicer, but more cluttered. I don't know if I even still have it.

Don't worry, it's pretty hard to make me mad. I take criticism well. In fact I'd usualy rather have constructive criticism than praise. Praise is inspiring, but doesn't help you improve.

Actually, I'm going to buy a new digital camera shortly, I should start a thread where everyone can praise my photos beyond belief, so I can show it to my fiancee and say "see, I NEED to spend two grand on a new camera, I'm awsome!" :) Heh heh...

Can I get some feedback on a photoshop job I did on one pic?

Original
http://www.pyroglyphfilms.com/gallery/screens/cy%20cluod%20lift1.jpg

Photoshopped (leves adjusted, a bit more saturation, and unshapr mask)
http://www.pyroglyphfilms.com/gallery/screens/3/cy%20cluod%20lift%20a.jpg

Dylan,

#10 big improvement

# 4 just for fun you might try playing around in PS with that one. Try some extreme contrast changes or other effects to see if you can silhouette the photographer and make it into a logo or something wild.

#17 improved

#25 growing on me, it must be art.

The PS comparison shots, improved, but a little too much contrast, I think. Definitely a question for Jeff Donald.

Dylan,

The first thing I notice when looking at your gallery page is that the pictures are all over the place. You might try picking a theme and trying to get 12-15 good pictures on that(which may mean shooting hundreds). Another aproach would be to try and incorporate your film experience into stills. Try and tell a story in still shots.