Hi, first let me say welcome to ePz, hope you enjoy it as much as I have over the years.

You have asked for crit, so here we go
Nice shot, very well composed with the flower stamen on the third. Perfect! So, we have established that you have a good eye for photography.

Colour could do with a bit of a boost as it looks slightly washed out, and I know this flower, Hibiscus, is vibrant. If you are using photoshop, try using auto levels, or making a layer in multiply and then reducing the opacity until you have the desired effect.

I think your camera has a macro setting, this can produce some lovely effects with flowers such as this, simply by focusing on a small part of the flower and blurring out the background. Camera support is essential when using macro, a sock full of rice will work as well as anything, and use the camera's timer so that you don't have to press the shutter button.
Have a try, but be warned, macro can become addictive, LOL!

Hope that helps.
Best,
Patricia.

Very impressive noisewear, however it would be disappointing if it did only save at 92 ppi.

Beautiful image and I actually prefer this to the original and the versions. Yes you lost quite a bit of detail, but hey, it's misty, if the foreground was sharp it would detract from the focal point which appears quite mystical in the shot.

I found PeterDsmith's comment really interesting, and marked it as constructive critique. He made a very pertinent point about googling travel images, and it's always worth doing that before you go to a location to take travel images if you hope to sell them.

Personally I seldom use noisewear. In photoshop I occasionally make a layer, use surface blur at half values, eg. 5/10, 8/16, and then reduce the top layer and sometimes erase parts of it, until I'm satisfied. I find in that way I don't get the edge blur and also have more control over the loss of detail.

A really beautiful image with super tones and lovely backlight.

I feel the composition would work better if the egret was on the third rather than center and the levels boosted to give a little more punch to the image, so I've done a mod

Auto levels then cloned in an inch to the bottom of the image, then cropped the left side. Dodged the background reflections to bring them out a little as, along with the grass, they frame the egret nicely.

It really is a gorgeous shot. If it were mine I'd frame it and have it on my wall. Hope that helps, Patricia.

Inspirational! First time I've ever said this in the crit gallery, but I see no way to improve the image.
Grasping at straws, perhaps the iris is a little hexagonal in the big portrait.

Still, must say I love it, and it has given me some fresh ideas for my wedding portraits, thank you!

Nice capture with good in camera composition and great back light.
I feel perhaps it need to 'pop' a little and have the distracting bits cloned out of the background.
I've done a mod:
Auto levels. Then boosted the colour in channel mixer, up red 24 down blue and green 12... and the same with the green and the blue. lifted the centre of the curves a little. Cloned out the distracting bits and dodged the fur a little. Smart sharpened 60-1.3.

Hope that helps,
Patricia.

what a beautiful scene! lovely light and interesting buildings.

You ask for crit so here goes
Quite important to get the verticals straight in this kind of shot, but a little rotation can sort that out.
About the composition, perhaps you didn't want too much of the rubbish bin in, but nevertheless, shooting a little more to the left would have made the empty bench a much better lead in, I know you would have lost that lovely window, still, the man is the subject and the eye would have been better led.
The highlights are a little blown perhaps they can be brought back in shadow/highlights, worth a try.

Still it's a pleasing candid shot and tells a good story; two old guys relaxing in a bit of shade on a hot afternoon, nice!

You really gave yourself a difficult task with this. The idea is good and each image has it's merits, but for them to work in harmony they need to be edited as one, not put together after with different white balance and varying degrees of sharpening and saturation.

Also the composition isn't balanced, large over small doesn't work unless you are trying to give a feeling of danger. Sorry to give you such a bashing:-(

And then the black background. Think about what you are trying to convey in the image... the delicate beauty of the swan, or it's fearsome strength, the fragility of nature, or our pollution and manipulation of it.

The idea is good, and worth trying again by arranging the original images and then editing them all together and pasting them on to a softer background to finish.

Hope that helps, Patricia.

I just wanted to say BRAVO! to you for posting this. Whether the image is flawed or not, us women are terrified of the big C and have to remind ourselves of the likelihood every single month of our adult lives.
Thank you for being realistic and trying something positive, and best wishes with the book.

To crit the shot my problem is the expressions, they don't seem to gell somehow. He looks hopeful yet she is very tense, and he looks slightly 'gropish' if you get me. Perhaps his hands on her shoulders and looking straight into the camera would have given a stronger message of support to the viewer, and her hands on her breasts looking slightly down at them.
Or him with his hands on her shoulders looking at her, and her holding her breasts looking at the camera... because the man does want to support and feels the loneliness of being almost useless, and the woman is consumed with fear and bewilderment, when she finds a problem; emotions which she tries to contain in daily normality. (I know, been there).

The black and white with the pink ribbon is a stroke of genius, and it is excellent that you have used a mature ordinary couple that most folk would identify with.

To sum up: you have put a lot of thought into it and yes, the basic idea is very good and works well, I just feel the models could convey a stronger message by using a slightly different pose.

Hope that helps,
Patricia.
PS, It's interesting that almost all the comments are from men. I too, looked at it yesterday... and turned away, the subject is just too awful. Thanks again.

first welcome to ePz. It's a wonderful site and I've learned most of my photography from here.

First you need to put the type of camera you are using in the info so that folk can give better advice and tips.

Both the advice team have given great info, I'd just like to add that composition is very important. She should be going into the frame, not leaving it. She is very beautiful and the image is nice, just the technicalities above to bare in mind if you get a chance to re-shoot it.

Most shots can be rescued in Photoshop and I've done a mod using most of the tricks available, to long a list to put here but you can read about portraits and composition in the Techniques area.

I really like the position of her face. Her nose is not breaking the cheek line or overshadowing her mouth, and her eyes are in focus. Well done!
Hope that helps,
Patricia.

It's a lovely shot with good composition but the problem is the highlights are burned out, particularly the little finger.
You can avoid this happening by sellotaping a length of greaseproof paper over the window where the light is coming through to hit her hand, this will soften the light and you will keep the details of her skin.

I've tried to rescue the image as much as possible by shadows/highlight: Shadows +14, Highlights +10, then I copied the details of her ring finger into the burned out little finger, then added a sepia filter +50.
Hope that helps,
Patricia.

Lovely image with great light and colour.
I've added a bit of punch by making a layer and on the bottom layer pulled the centre of the curves down a little, then smart sharpened 50/2.9.
Then I erased the bottom 2/3rds of the top layer as I felt the background was fine as it was and didn't need boosting at all.
Hope that helps,
Patricia.

It's a lovely shot, the composition is good and it's sharp enough, but to really show off the flowers you have to make the distracting background less distracting. If you are using macro you really do need to support the camera on a bean bag, tripod, or anything solid. A couple of pound of rice in a sock sealed with a 'lastic band is as good as anything

I wonder if you did have the camera set on macro? If you can change the depth of field take it to the lowest f number, then the background will blur a lot and the flowers will pop out. I've done a very exaggerated and rough mod to show what I mean.

Also you can lift the mid tones in curves if you have Photoshop or most other editing programs. Just push the middle of the curve line to the left a little. You will find this will brighten the yellows without losing detail.

Hope that helps, Patricia.

Dappled or uneven light is difficult but you have done a good job here. The problem with the image is there is so much going on it's difficult to see the focal point. The eyes or mouth is the most common subject of a portrait.
Another thing to watch is the nose, especially when shooting from above as you have here. When the end of the nose is almost on the top lip it dominates the face. A slightly lower angle would have worked better. When shooting from the side you should also try not to have the nose breaking the cheek line. Composition points for a portrait are usually the triangle or rule of thirds.
Also, and this is the model's fault not yours, when the hand is posed on the face it should be barely touching the skin, not actually making an indent as it is here, breaking the lovely line of the cheek.
Hope that helps,
Patricia.

Don't fret, it's a common problem especially in high contrast images.
There is an easy solution in this case.
Make a duplicate layer. close the top layer and working on the bottom layer desaturated the magenta 50% and the blue 50%.
Open the top layer and erase the bottom half of the top layer.
Merge down.
This will give the shadows a more natural look without desaturating the other colours. I've done a mod
Best,
Patricia.

The post processing is good, and the subject interesting. However there is something not quite right about the composition IMHO. Can't just put my finger on it.
Wish the uncropped version was here to do a mod on.
Sorry I'm not much help:-(
Really cracking idea!

I've done a mod, cropped some of the right space and stretched the image to the right so the flower is more central and the petals fill the bottom. Added a black frame to define the edges.

Really beautiful image with wonderful colour.

I've done a mod to clone out the distracting tree. Lifted shadows 30%, dodged the first post to bring out the wood texture and saturated it a little with the sponge tool.
Burned the mid-tones of the sky and the reeds and dodged the foreground water to lift it a little more.

I see you saved the jpg at resolution 300, this makes quite a small image to work on. 72 res works better
20 minutes.

Stunning location well captured and exposed.
Hope that helps.

Well the composition is way off, it's unbalanced and that makes it irritating, it breaks all the standard composition rules, and to be honest, I can't say why exactly, but IMHO it's absolutely fabulous!
Perhaps it's because it jars, I have no idea, but it is attention grabbing...but is this just because of that great sky? Not sure.
The sky on its own would just be a good sunset sky.
Crop the image below half way down and it would be a reasonably well balance silhouette sunset.
Very difficult to crit. Strangely unsettling, aggravating yet enjoyable. Does that make any sense at all?

I see 27 folk have looked at it but only one has commented. I'd be interested to see if anyone puts their gut thoughts to this image.

OK, when you opened the original image in JPG did you convert it to tiff to work on?
File>save as>choose tiff.
When it's edited and as you want it File>save. Then resize and File>save as>jpg.
hope that helps. if there's anything you don't understand just say.
best, P.

Really beautiful image, I like the way he is peeping over the grass, looks kind of shy
You did well to not burn out any feather detail, and the eye catch light and water droplets just make the shot for me.

I cloned out the top of the grass where it went over the beak and to the eye, and dodged the water droplets and eye to give a bit more sparkle.

Super image!

Wow! What a lot of work, and a great idea too!

All the images seem to be very well taken and the colours are strong. I see your problem, good idea but cant quite get the result that's in your head, happens to me all the time, very frustrating isn't it, LOL!

I think perhaps the problem is you don't really have a focus point, so everything is fighting for attention. I'd try some de-saturating on either the background or the additional images so that one compliments the other.

I really like the way you have soft erased the additional images diagonal (apart from the bottom right one which perhaps needs the same treatment to give the image consistency).

Perhaps the best advice is to put the image away for a while and then come back to it with fresh eyes.

Hope that helps, P.