Photo Critique Club

[The Coop Crew]

1809x2000 pixels = Portrait

1814x2000 pixels = Portrait

The first numbers are always the width and the second numbers are the height. Landscape is wider than tall.

Thank you for that information!

 

[The Coop Crew]

Additionally:

First image is very soft. I can't tell where the focus is at, but it's not cleanly focused on the bird's face and eye. The background is very busy and very off-angle from the chicken. As a past judge, I can tell you that technical precision and strong composition both matter. Fuzzy and slightly off-focus shots can and will score lower.

The second image has better focus, but it's just flat. There's not anything standing out in the overall composition.

Compositionally, neither of these really jump out or are very exciting. There's no action, there's no drama, there's no dramatic lighting or pastoral background. They're lovely looking birds just kinda sitting around.

Also, both of these images, while decently sized, are low quality. They're 72 DPI which is far too low for print. If you zoom them you can see large chunky noise which is a combination of image compression and the lighting conditions. If they were to be chosen you'd need to be able to provide high-quality high res images for print, and these won't do.

Take a look at the past calendar shoots and the winning images for ideas and inspiration. Generally speaking start by asking yourself "if I was paying money for a calendar, would I pay for this image to be in it?" And do it objectively, without taking into account your emotional attachment to a given bird or a given shot. If you don't think you'd pay money for it, keep trying. We want the best of the best and this is one of the most critically and harshly judged contests at BYC. Bring your "A" game, because everyone else is too.

Thank you! All of that was super helpful! I will practice and submit some after I practice! These were with my phone but I do have an actual cannon that I can dig out of my storage tote!

 

[azurbanclucker]

Thank you for that information!

You can look at the first post in the calendar thread as well, Rule 2 has an illustration included which shows the differences between portrait, square, and landscape images. It should help you with your composition when you're looking for those last 2 shots.

 

[R2elk]

They're 72 DPI which is far too low for print.

This is pretty much the standard for Internet posted images. This is the reason that they require the full size images for final submission. The 2000 pixel on the biggest side is a BYC posting limit. Even if the original was 8000 pixels wide it will only show up as 2000 pixels after BYC resizes it.

Unfortunately some phone cameras are saving images at 72 dpi because the code writers think everything is only for Internet positing.

 

[The Coop Crew]

This is pretty much the standard for Internet posted images. This is the reason that they require the full size images for final submission. The 2000 pixel on the biggest side is a BYC posting limit. Even if the original was 8000 pixels wide it will only show up as 2000 pixels after BYC resizes it.

Unfortunately some phone cameras are saving images at 72 dpi because the code writer think everything is only for Internet positing.

Ahhh okay. Do you have a solution to that? Like can you resize images manually? Or will that mess them up?

 

[R2elk]

Ahhh okay. Do you have a solution to that? Like can you resize images manually? Or will that mess them up?

All good photo editing software has the ability to resize images.

 

[Lacy Duckwing]

Ahhh okay. Do you have a solution to that? Like can you resize images manually? Or will that mess them up?

Resizing and cropping can sometimes affect the picture's overall quality. For the pictures being chosen (this includes the top 30-100 for the final round), they will want the original photo, not the cropped, resized, edited version.

 

[casportpony]

I was at the Gilroy Rodeo this last weekend and got to watch Matt Cohen, a rodeo photographer, taking pictures. I decided to look for him on the web and saw that he does clinics. Here are some videos of him critiquing his students:

 

[casportpony]

 

[casportpony]