My wife Lisa at Sesimbra castle. It was a cloudy day so the light was even and soft. Shot with Nikkor 70-300mm f4-5.6D ED, handheld at 70mm, 1/500 sec.
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Place: 234 out of 251 Avg (all users): 4.5837 Avg (commenters): 4.4000 Avg (participants): 4.4560 Avg (non-participants): 4.7167 Views since voting: 753 Views during voting: 327 Votes: 245 Comments: 12 Favorites: 0
I think I must agree with most of the commenters that your subject is not easy to find in this photo.
The main focus must be on your wife and I would have chosen a tighter crop.
Think while doing post processing about the 640 Pixels maximum, and try to use them.
Try to fill up as much of that 640 Pixels with your main subject.
The whole key in scoring here at DPC is to lure the voters into voting higher, and the way to do that is “impact”
A few rules I have learned here at DPC are:
- Make sure the voter understands in 1 second what you are trying to say.
- Make sure your subject is in focus.
- Saturate as much as you can, over saturate and then go 1 step back (that will slam the picture in their face)
- Sharpen; try various methods of sharpening until you find something that you like. Then after resizing sharpen again (read this tutorial: //www.dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=26 )
- Use the rule of thirds as much as possible, I know this is a rule that you can break, but here on DPC it’s a rule you can’t break, otherwise some people believe your photo is not good.
Off course these rules are not always right, but generally I think if you try to stick to most of these rules you will see your score get up.
I hope this helps you in any way.
Keep up the good work.
Peter
If you have any questions, comments or other things about this critique, or are bored and want to spam someone just PM me
IMO, this needs to be cropped in a bit so the subject is easier to see. You should try to use the rule of thirds to place the subject. I'd get her head aabove the horizon by squating down further to take the photo. Also, try using a wide aperture (low f/stop) to tighten up the depth of focus so those trees in the background will be blurry & not distract the viewer.
I like this very simple setup. To improve it I think I would have tried moving the subject down the hill to the left so that she was in the first third of the shot and sky was the only background behind her. She would have stood out more. Also this is a fairly soft shot, maybe a little bit more focus on the face would have made her pop.
This badly needed a saturation boost. Everything looks dull and flat. You probably would have gotten a point higher on average from everyone with a boost in color.
Why did you chose to be so far from the subject? Is the subject the field or the person in it? This shot also screams for Flash fill. With the light location and the distance from your subject this shot has a snapshot feel to it, even though I feel you were trying for a nice portrait in the field. Get in closer and reflect some light back into her face, and I think you'll be pleased with the results.
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