Critique

Whatcha think?

Picture taken after a severe storm in the Greater Toronto Area. Seeking feed back and tips to improve photography.

Note: I did use paint to resize the photo to a lesser resolution.

Hello and welcome to the forum. Please take a moment to read the critique forum rules in the thread. I've posted part of them below and will give you a chance to modify your post with the appropriate information.

PHOTO SUBMISSION RULES

1. Only one photo submission per day (24 hours). We don't want the forum to be monopolized by a single member.

2. Upload one image in your post. If you have a set of images, just provide a text link, either to your member gallery here on Nikonites.com or off-site. If you are unsure how to do this, please ask.

3. Include as much info as possible along with your image:

• EXIF data
• Artistic intent/summary of the photo
• What specifically do you want feedback on?

Photo submissions will be moderated. If the above 3 items are not included along with your photo, your thread will be deleted.

Click to expand...

Score: 7/12 (12 elements of a merit image)

With a little bit of post processing, this could be more of a 10/12.

There is a lot of potential for impact here with this subject matter. The lighting is extremely dramatic after a storm when the sun first shines through. However, the colors in your photo and the lack of contrast and vibrance don't adequately portray that. It just needs more "punch" and drama. The lens you used for this is one of my favorites . . . perfect for capturing that dramatic sky. Good choice. But the fact that the building is tilted on the right is a little disturbing. My thoughts on this are that you need to fix it in post processing (Lightroom has a lens correction feature that you can use manually), or make the tilt extreme enough to make it part of the composition/style. As it is, it just looks like a mistake. (-1 Impact, -1 color balance, -1 technical excellence)

With extreme lighting like this and such a range of tonal values, this scene would be a perfect set up for HDR (High Dynamic Range imaging) As it is the front part of the picture has lost too much detail in the shadows. You can lighten it in post processing some and that would help. (-1 lighting, -1 technique)

Your composition and creativity are excellent and even storytelling earned you plus points for choosing that moment to capture. The other elements just require a little more practice.

As a reminder, mine is only one opinion and photography is very subjective. I think you're off to a great start --you definitely have a good eye for dramatic scenes.

I think this picture has something specially for the clouds and the dramatic light. The tilted and warped building on the right bugs me and also the lack of detail in the bottom middle portion of the picture (the river). These things could probably be repaired or made better with Lightroom or Photoshop, but the original poster did not mention what program he had at his disposal to do such post processing.

So to conclude, I find the composition interesting, but it's lacking in highlights in the bottom portion.

In my opinion, 8/12.

This is a good capture of a dramatic scene, but as stated, lacking punch.

-1, Technical- post processing. The color is dull, perhaps you could punch it up a bit.

-1, Composition- The curvature to the building to the right needs correction, or perhaps cropping to eliminate the sky to the far right. Cropping out some of the right and bottom will bring us closer to the magnificent sky and highlighted trees.

-1, Lighting- I wonder if active D would have helped here to make the bottom portion more meaningful. Perhaps cropping off the majority of the bottom third would take the focus off this dead space and put even more focus on the clouds.

-1 impact- Great subject, I don't feel any of the awe of what you probably saw.

This shot has allot of potential, I'm considering this lens and am happy to see good results.

Nice job on the critique, Rick