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pablophotographer

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29 Apr 2012 - 12:20 PM

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It's almost surreal!

I shall congratulate you for your choice to shoot it (or present it) in black and white.

I do not know the weather conditions at the time you took the picture (apart that they were not that bad so you could get out and test your gear) but I am puzzled why the camera has chosen f10, which is not useful, at the case, since not much of teh background is needed to be recorded explicitly. Time was 1/125 which is the time fraction of shooting in bright conditions (sunny days) with f8 or f11 for films with ISO 100.

I shall remind you , when you are shooting from top or from a high ankle down to a subject (as if you fly with a helicopter and you are shooting the trees below) you don't need depth of field, so you can use your widest aperture.

Composition-wise, this is a cracker. Two main subjects, the lady and her dog, sleeping, have the same posture at different directions. Antithesis and symmetry altogether. The touching point that makes it surreal is the sign on the bench(?) that says: "welcome". I am not annoyed with the tree trunk on the right, and the one just behind her, although some would say to crop them out.

What I would suggest though, was to shoot from a even higher angle, so you would have more foreground, and thus less backround behind the lady, all that darker stripe is irrelevant to the picture. I would also be more careful to bring the camera just a bit to the right so the distance from the end of dog's leg and the distance from the lady's head to teh end of the frames is equal.

maybe next time? If she is taking her dog for a walk you may meet her again....

Congratulations anyway.

Constructive Critique!

DRicherby

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29 Apr 2012 - 2:05 PM

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This is a nice shot of a very appealing subject. Black and white works well, as the scene has a timeless feel to it and colours might distract from the compositional symmetry. I think the composition is maybe a little tight and it might also have been improved slightly by getting down on one knee so you were more at the subjects' level. That might help the viewer to feel more involved in the scene.

pablophotographer wrote:
Quote: I am puzzled why the camera has chosen f10, which is not useful, at the case, since not much of teh background is needed to be recorded explicitly.

The camera didn't choose the aperture: the photograph was taken in aperture priority mode so the photographer chooses the aperture and the camera uses whatever shutter speed will give the correct exposure. This is as it should be: the whole point of using a DSLR is that you make the creative decisions (for example, choosing the aperture to control depth of field) and you let the camera make technical decisions that don't affect the shot (such as shutter speed in a scene where nothing's moving). In a photo where the primary creative decision is controlling motion blur (either creating motion blur or freezing motion), you'd want to use shutter priority mode instead.

In this case, I think the camera settings are sensible. You need to make sure the woman and the dog are both sharp and, really, it doesn't matter if the background is sharp or not because there's nothing much there: it won't look bad if it's blurred and it won't look bad if it's sharp. Shooting with a narrow aperture has guaranteed that the subject is sharp and the shutter speed is fast enough to avoid camera shake.

pablophotographer wrote:
Quote: I shall remind you , when you are shooting from top or from a high ankle down to a subject (as if you fly with a helicopter and you are shooting the trees below) you don't need depth of field, so you can use your widest aperture.

But this isn't shot from a high angle: it looks like it's shot from the normal eye level of a standing adult. Also, it's usually best to avoid the lens's widest aperture, unless you actually need to limit the depth of field. Image quality tends to improve if you stop down a little.


Quote: I would also be more careful to bring the camera just a bit to the right so the distance from the end of dog's leg and the distance from the lady's head to teh end of the frames is equal.

I think the balance is fine, there. The dog's head is about the same distance from the edge as the bench is and its leg is only a very small element of the photograph. I don't think you should make major compositional decisions based on such a small thing as exactly where the dog's leg is.

By the way, most of your tags don't match the photograph. There's no architecture here, it's not a close-up or macro shot, it's not a photo of flowers or plants (it just happens to have some grass in it) and it's not an abstract shot. Choosing the right tags will help people find your photograph; choosing the wrong tags will annoy people who are looking for architecture shots and find a photo of a woman and a dog sleeping.

Dave.

Constructive Critique!