Beach critque

Shandor

New member
I would love your critiques. I am an oil painter and am taking photos for painting but also to preserve family memories. Just learning to use a camera. Thanks in advance. IMG_1242-2.jpg
 

Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
Subject position and isolation (in focus) are good. Horizon is in a good location (not the middle of the frame) but should be level. A more interesting sky (blue with some clouds) would help the picture. The swimmer on the man right ether should have some space from his arm or be hidden behind him.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
Subject position and isolation (in focus) are good. Horizon is in a good location (not the middle of the frame) but should be level. A more interesting sky (blue with some clouds) would help the picture. The swimmer on the man right ether should have some space from his arm or be hidden behind him.

I agree with this. The horizon should be straightened a smidge which should be able to be done with various types of post processing software. And remove the swimmer's head on the right since it looks like it is attached to the man's arm. I'd suggest adding a slight vignette to draw the eyes inwards towards the subject.

Capturing with oil paint sounds like a fascinating way to hold onto cherished memories! My mother's cousin's son is an artist. Back in the 80's he drew friends and family members to incorporate into book covers. Westerns were one of his favorites because he loved drawing a lot of wrinkles in the cowboys' shirts. In fact, I could walk into a bookstore and tell which covers he drew. It was his signature style.

Have fun with it! You are off to a great start with your camera. :)
 

Shandor

New member
Thanks. I'm new to this. Do you have a link that I should be posting to instead? Is it okay for Canon users to be on this site?

Thanks again
 

Marilynne

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Thanks. I'm new to this. Do you have a link that I should be posting to instead? Is it okay for Canon users to be on this site?

Thanks again

Yes, you just can't enter the weekly/monthly challenges w/o a Nikon camera. Also, if you have a camera specific question, we probably won't be able to answer it.

You're in the right spot now - Non Nikon cameras.
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
The horizon seems like a minor issue overall by logic but we are very sensitive to some features of our environment, two of those keenly detected subjects are eyes, any eyes are focused on in mass of complex scene elements, our brains key in on eyes. Creatures who could detect eyes ever when camouflaged, passed on their genes and those who couldn't faded from the genealogical record and were not our ancestors.
Another thing our brains key into is the horizon. Even a slight bit off changes our perception of the entire scene which is why landscape photographers use spirit bubbles to level the tripod mounted camera. Luckily most post-processing software allows for leveling afterward. Viewing a scene with a horizon, that is not level, causes discomfort, nervousness and affects the sense of balance. 1 degree off level is enough to cause discomfort.

From a perception view, the main tilting to the right takes the viewer's eye off the screen to the right instead of to his relationship to the people in the background left-center. When looking at a scene our eyes wander, alot, it is part of the scanning process that the brain uses to see the whole scene although the eye is at any given instant focused on a tiny portion of the scene. The constant scanning at different focal distances and light and dark sensitivity make for a composite of the scene to build up over a few milliseconds to give the impression of everything in focus near or far, and with detail appropriately illuminated by constant iris changes to give an impression of the scene in very wide range, like an HDR photo where very bright parts appear less so, and very dark parts seem less dark to make a 16 stop scene appear to be within the natural 10-12 stop range of our eyes. Modern cameras have more dynamic range than human eyes but they take a single frame at one aperture, ISO and duration. But the eye and brain work like a HRD shot plus composited panoramic photo, plus focus stacking image. That is why some claim cameras are not as wide a range DR and focus depth of field as the human eye. It is far better than the human eye if the camera and software merge many frames, each optimized for focus depth, aperture and panning, like the brain and eye do.
What does this have to do with art? Our capture of a scene with our eye works on these different principles and processes than a camera single frame and if artists want to capture the traits of a scene a human perceives in person, when painting from a reference photo, out to be taking lots of photos of different apertures, and depth of field plus stitching panned images so their reference is closer to what he would have seen in person.
 
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