Photo Critique Club

[ButtonHoarder]

I like the first one better as your large dog is facing more toward the camera and you get a better profile view.

I'm not a fan of the "half horse crop" on either of them. Maybe see how they look if you pull the left side in and make them move vertical?

Like this?

 

[NagemTX]

One more, octotail.

 

[Nero70002]

One more, octotail.
View attachment 3480778

It would be better if you could get him into the sunlight, but this photo is better. Also if you could get the phone to be at half his height so he’s centered, and make sure he’s turned all the way sidesways to the camera. So that would be a little lower, a little tilted up more, and to the left a little.

 

[mdees88]

View attachment 3480674
Should I edit anything in this one?

I agree that having all three ducks in focus would be more ideal. In regards to editing this image, the front duck is in focus and is your primary subject. Unfortunately he is in a shadow and the other two are in the sun. My eye was drawn to them first because they are brighter. So I would brighten up the center duck and maybe even darken the other two a tad. Here's a quick edit I did on my phone...

Original:

Edit:

 

[mdees88]

View attachment 3480631
Is this a good crop for this one?

You dont want to crop any off the top or left side because of how close his feathers are to the edge of the frame. Crops are personal preference but I would do it like this. This follows rules of thirds and puts his eye near the upper right intersection and he is looking down and to the left which works ideal.

If you could do it again you would want to back up a tiny bit to get a little more breathing room around your chicken. You want a little more space between his head feathers and the edge of the frame, ideally...

 

[mdees88]

That is a cute shot! How can one get all three ducklings in focus? I struggle with this too.

I haven't shot in a while and I stopped by a local wildlife exhibit this afternoon on my way to work. I did my first try at indoor (not wild) wildlife photography. I knew I wasn't going to have much light so I brought a 100mm f2.8 lens. I shot wide open at F2.8 aperture to gather as much light as possible and I wanted a shallow depth of field so the backgrounds would be blurry.

Well I was able to keep my ISO pretty low but I didn't realize how shallow my depth of field actually was until I got done. 95% of my shots were useless. The depth of field was so shallow that the owls face/ beak is in focus but it's eyes were not. Or the eye is sharp but the beak and face feathers are blurry. Same with the snakes. Eye sharp, mouth blurry even had it where the outer portion of the eye (cornea) was sharp but the iris was blurry. The autofocus was not working good at all shooting through glass enclosures either. Lessons learned....

Next time I go, I'm going to manual focus through the glass. I will also stop the aperture down a tad, (if there's enough light available to do this). But primarily, I'm going to back up a little, then crop in later. I find shooting further away and cropping in the easiest way to increase depth of field.

 

[mdees88]

Like this? View attachment 3480776

I liked your first image but I also think that getting the entire horse in frame would look better. I think if you would've taken a few steps to the left so that the horse was quartering towards you (maybe at a 20-45 degree angle), that shot would look good. I think the horse is a little too close to the edge IMO in your current crop. Maybe if you split the difference between your original and your current crop, it might work better.

I think this landscape crop works pretty good but it's not the vertical composition you were going for....

And here it is with a slight lightroom boost...

 

[Yard Farmer]

What do y'all think of this?

I'm thinking it's a bit too dark..

 

[mdees88]

What do y'all think of this?

I'm thinking it's a bit too dark..
View attachment 3480910

Yeah, I think it's a tad dark but I like it. The composition is nice and the background is decent. The semi harsh light coming from behind the bird is causing his front to side to be very underexposed, but you got some side light hitting the eye and beak which makes it work. It would be unusable without that. You could try pulling the shadows up a little but overall I think it looks pretty good...

 

[Nero70002]

I agree that having all three ducks in focus would be more ideal. In regards to editing this image, the front duck is in focus and is your primary subject. Unfortunately he is in a shadow and the other two are in the sun. My eye was drawn to them first because they are brighter. So I would brighten up the center duck and maybe even darken the other two a tad. Here's a quick edit I did on my phone...

Original:
View attachment 3480861

Edit:
View attachment 3480866

Thank you, it does look much better.