Dead of Winter

Ok, so untouched picture, only editing down was to resize it down.

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This photo suffers from... what was the point? The dead weed isn't particularly interesting and the house in the background is in focus enough that it hasn't isolated whatever you were trying to show me in the weed. I'm stuck asking, Why? Was this an accidental shutter release or what?

Don't take the criticism as a baseball bat attack on your efforts. I'm sure there was something interesting you were trying to show, but just haven't figured out how to do it yet. I've always said that a camera comes into your hands with 1000 bad images for you to get through before you start putting it together. Keep shooting.

There is a lot to learn in photography and I don't think the studying or learning ever stops. I would suggest some study on aperture and how it effect your image and composition and how to make compelling images. YouTube, this forum and various online resources can really help. Pay attention to photos that really grab your attention. Ask yourself why it did. Nearly everyone goes through the same evolution, study, practice and a vision is what's needed. Keep at it!

Looking at the image here, rather than on my phone/tablet, and I think it could be helped somewhat with a little more light on the dead leaf. There's just a lot of detail that's not visible in the leaf as it's currently exposed, where the background looks to be more interesting. Rather than bumping the exposure on this image, adding some light to the dead leaf should brighten it above the background.

The other problem is that having the subject dead center of the frame is not ideal in most cases, so some recomposition could help here too. I like the tree framing out the left edge, and it looks like the dead plant is pushing the right border as well ... maybe trying to frame the over all perspective, but it's not quite there for me yet.

There has been three good feedbacks, I would like to hear from the shooter what was the vision? What were you trying to achieve. Then we may be able to give advice to get you there.

Moab Man said:

There has been three good feedbacks, I would like to hear from the shooter what was the vision? What were you trying to achieve. Then we may be able to give advice to get you there.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the late response. I wanted to highlight the different ideas of winter and how it affects everything.
I know now I should've tried a different focus. But it captures the harshness in the plant and the rust in the framing holding it up. The background should've been blurred just enough to hide some details, but reveal that even in the back its dead as well.
I know it's kinda dark to highlight death or dead things, but isn't that part of winter? When things die before a rebirth in spring. And the plant was a tomato plant before it withered out.

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fullmetalsleeve said:

Sorry for the late response. I wanted to highlight the different ideas of winter and how it affects everything.
I know now I should've tried a different focus. But it captures the harshness in the plant and the rust in the framing holding it up. The background should've been blurred just enough to hide some details, but reveal that even in the back its dead as well.
I know it's kinda dark to highlight death or dead things, but isn't that part of winter? When things die before a rebirth in spring. And the plant was a tomato plant before it withered out.

Click to expand...

I agree with your line of thinking. However, since a DSLR does not have the dynamic range as wide as the human eye, you're probably seeing more detail in that dead tomato plant than what comes through in the image. That's why I recommended the small hit of flash on the plant, to bring back some detail without changing the overall exposure of the image. The image can have dark parts, but when the detail is missing, the eye wanders to other parts of the image looking for detail. Underexposing the plant takes the focus off the plant and has the eye focusing more on the background, which in addition to being brighter, is also in reasonable focus ... consequently leaves the view wondering what the subject is.

Last year, when everybody else was shooting fun stuff in the snow, I went to the cemetery down the street and shot dying grave flowers. So, don't worry about subject matter. We all like different things. I was on the forum a long time before I got the courage to formally ask for feedback. I got the same advice you are getting.

Do you have photo editing software. There is a lot you can do with this image to make it kind of artsy if that is your thing.

Chalk this one up as one of those ideas that seemed good at the time , but didn't really work out as a 'keeper'.

I have a bit different take on it. The title describes exactly the feeling I had seeing the image, it felt cold, wet, dead as when seeing the same sort of scenes in person. Maybe a little reflector on the camera side of the stock would have given more detail but detail is not needed on something withered and dead to know the feeling. It conveys the general impression, not details. The foreground stock could even have been defocused to create more of the impression. There is just enough clarity of the house to fit the overall impression. I think it is a fine photo that conveys a feeling that would have been absent if more detail was seen. Some photos offer something in the clarity of the detail and some, only convey a feeling and too much clarity would detract from the feeling.