Critique my pics please

gerryk

Since I was so free and easy in doling out criticism to others, I should really put mine out there for your opinions... so what do you think?


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Larianne

I like the fourth one.

FX Meister

I don't really like the exposure of the first or the composition of any of them except the fourth.

Shrimp

What camera did u take them with?

TerrorFirmer

Fourth one is good, fifth one somewhat interesting - first three, while not terrible...

DadaKopf

I like the third one compositionally, it's interesting and of a particular genre, but some areas are way too underexposed. A more balanced exposure would make it better.

Djddd1

Jesus, You would have to miss that Icn.

gerryk

Larianne, I have more macros I'll post below.

FX Meister, do you think the first is underexposed? I was trying to capture some of the moodiness of the cloudy sky and ensure the wire was silhouetted.

Shrimp, a Nikon F801

MobileInfantry ...are boring?

DadaKopf, I agree it could do with a little more definition.

Djddd1, you're right... I should have took a few steps forward and not included it at all. I don't rate tags as a form of graffitti. As long as Grift/Drop/ICN crew do nothing but tag, I won't take pictures of them.

Thank you all for your criticism... I've only recently got into photography and am still finding my feet. I'll post more soon for more opinions

johndoe77ie

what prison were these taken from?

Metacortex

I honestly don't like any of those picture.
Nothing jumps out at me from them. The presentation is bad in the sense that there is none.

gerryk

I'm not sure what you mean by presentation... all I provided is links to images.
Had a look at your gallery, by the way. Very impressive indeed. How do you get such saturated colours?

Metacortex

What i mean is, you need to so something with them to make them eyecatching.
Add contrast, borders, try some post processing. Don't just point and shoot and upload.

gerryk

Ah right... I get you now. As for post processing... I'm all for it, but I want to try to walk before I start running. I've only been taking pictures since March, and my head is already full of stuff from that without bringing Photoshop into the equation too.
I do take your point though... your advice is appreciated

gerryk

Ok, just out of interest, I did some messing about with these three...


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gerryk

Here's another...

Zombrex

gerryk wrote:

Ah right... I get you now. As for post processing... I'm all for it, but I want to try to walk before I start running. I've only been taking pictures since March, and my head is already full of stuff from that without bringing Photoshop into the equation too.
I do take your point though... your advice is appreciated

Pictures like your first ones around the prision (i assume it was a prision) are the type that really come into context when viewed as a collection with a common theme. As individual photographs they don't stand out, but put together with a clear message and theme they can become more powerful.

When taking pictures like these try and think more about what you are photographing than how you think the photo will come out. With a collection of photographs you want to try and get a cross the feeling you have about the place you are in.

gerryk

Heh... nope, not a prison, just some nasty spiky things near where I live. I have a bunch of such pictures, so I will post them as a set when I scan them. I'm fascinated by the fact that people design things like that to be as evil and damaging to people as possible.

PurpleFistMixer

First one - I like the intricacy of the barbed wire, it makes it look almost like a spiderweb or something. I don't think it's underexposed because it's meant to be in silhouette, however I think the focus of the picture is sort of unclear. The picture is divided too equally between the sky and the silhouetted structure, so I'm not sure which one I'm meant to be looking at. You could fix that by including either more of the sky, or more of the silhouette. However I reckon if you had more of the silhouette you'd have to give it more exposure to prevent the photo from being just mostly black.

Second one - The light highlight is nice, but... I dunno, I just don't get this photo. It's a picture of a wall? So...?

Third one - This one just feels like it's missing something. What are we supposed to be looking at? The little spikey things, the wires, the sky? The fact that it's a photo taken against the sky like that, it's gonna darken the things in the foreground so it would be difficult to have any of them as your focal point.

Fourth one - This is interesting, it's got a nice feeling of depth 'cause of the blurriness in the background. This is kind of irrelevant to critique, but what kind of lens did you use for this photo? It looks kind of like it has the edge distortion of a wide angle lens, but that just might be the natural curve of those spiny things. Speaking of which.. what are they?

Fifth one - I quite like this one. It's got that urban decay thing I like, the way the wall is all dirty to the edge, it frames it nicely. However, I dunno... there's something about photographing graffiti that doesn't seem right to me. I mean, unless you did the graffiti yourself, you're basically just taking a photo of someone else's work.

About post production.. well, I reckon it's always the ideal if you can get photographs WITHOUT using post production. Especially if you're using film, I think. Apparently most digital cameras take photographs with post production in mind, so you're sort of expected to do something with them. I mean, post production is nice and hell, if you can do things to enhance your photos, why not? But there's still something to be said for getting photographs right using just the camera.

gerryk

The things in 4 are cactus spines... I used a 50mm focal length on a zoom with extension tubes to shoot macro. I shot this wide open (f4@50mm), hence the shallow DOF. It's roughly 1:1 macro.

The graffiti appealed to me because it reminds me of that John Carpenter movie, They Live. I have a thing for graffiti that's more than just tags.

Once again, thanks to everyone for the comments.

Zulu

2nd one is good - but I'd crop off half of it.
4th is good also.