This shot jumped out at me during voting. I thought, 'wow, amazingly good panning capture'. I find out later, that it scored only 5.1. Why?
2 answers. 1. Not meeting the challenge topic. The task was to shoot something that would fit inside NG's covers, or a cover shot for NG. Probably most people thought your title was more suiting 'Science Digest', 'Technology' or some other mag. 2. It's a bit dark.
Now, here you have a problem. Too much time on the shutter and the panning becomes more difficult. Too wide an aperture and you can't get the focus easily. With digital work, a simple tone curve or levels adjustment post-processing would solve the problem easily. Maybe the brightness is fine on your monitor. In that case, think about monitor calibration. Looking again at the shot, I notice that there's a big, dark tree just in front of the boy's face. Most likely, that's the main problem - not the overall darkness, just the localised darkness at the important point. You need to choose your location carefully - even a metre further back would have worked better.
Otherwise, a great shot. Very well done.
If you have any comments on my critique, please feel free to contact me.
it feels like i'm moving when i look at it- i think it's good, just because it's nature doesn't mean it wouldn't be in NG...have you looked at the actual magazine?
Good panning technique. Not so sure it'd be a national geographic type shot, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Might be just a little bit underexposed but understandably so due to the motion.
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