Freestyleby
mecfcostaComment by jdannels: Critique Club
This is a great example of catching the critical moment of the action as the skater is trying to ollie over the the skateboard. I know I spent countless hours trying to do the same thing.
While looking at the size of your photo and the size of the file I would first off reccomend using the full 640 pixel size for photos and get as close to the 150 kb limit when you upload the file. This will give your photo the most details it can get. For example The details in the lower skateboard would have been abit more crisp if you had used a larger size file.
preparing photos for submission with photoshop Here is a link to help you prepare your photos since I saw that many of your submissions were of around 80kb instead of around 150 kb.
As far as technicals of the photo I think there are a few things that could be improved. Your photo has everything in focus since you use had your lens stopped at f9. This created a distracting background that where my eye jumps from the plant to the main subject to the house in the background. If you don't have time to move to another location with less going on in the background shooting with the lens at the lowest fstop you have available will blur the background and force the eye to focus on the subject. Also many skateboard shots are shot from a very low angle and with a wide angle(like you 18-55 mm lens) to have lots of details about the skater. For example I can see that it looks like his tongue is sticking out and he must be concentrating really hard, I think this detail would give the viewer something to connect to. Also I would have shot the skater from the other side(the side where his back is)and had the skater turn around also so that the shadow across his chest would not be there. Also I am not sure what is going on around the skater's arm it appears you did some cloning or there is a weird shadow.
Overall I think you nailed the hardest part of skateboard photos and that is to get the timing down to that moment where everything comes together, that is a very hard thing to do. The other issues I think were just setup and knowing what angles look good for skateboard shots. My guess is that most voters appreciated the moment you captured but couldn't vote higher because there was abit less to connect with with out a facial expression or arms up in the air trying to balance.
I hope this was helpful to you and not too much critique, but they are just my suggestions and if you have any questions or comments for me you can send me a PM.
Photographer found comment helpful.