dpChallenge Critique:
First of all, congratulation on your significant rankings improvement from the first two challenges to this one. 23% is a huge jump.
The goal here is to provide you with a few things to think about, and implement, that hopefully will strengthen your photographic skills. Also keep in mind that photography, like all art, is highly emotional and subjective. Unless you plan on turning pro with your photography, the most important aspect is to enjoy what you are doing. That said, on to the feedback.
Aesthetics: Black and White images almost always take on a nostalgic look. The bike rack and overgrown grass add to this effect. It would have been better if the bike had been an older model, but you can't control everything.
Cropping:
You might be able to improve the image with a different crop. Without seeing the original, I don't know how much more picture there is. But you might want to try moving the bike rack to the left or right. Don't center it quite at much. Think of a tic-tac-toe board. Experiment with lining your main subjects up along one of the four lines on a tic-tac-toe board. Search Google for "rule of thirds" for more information on this concept.
The leaning street in the background also creates an unstable feeling. The human eye usually doesn't like seeing things falling off the canvas like that.
Creativity / Originality: At first glance this seem like an ordinary image, but if you search through all of the dpchallenge archives I doubt you would find many like this. So, in fact, it is very original idea.
Great photographs all have one thing in common. You just want to keep looking at them. They draw you in. The more you look at them, the more you like them. There just isn't enough available in this image to make a viewer want to keep looking at it. Most people are going to think "Bike, Bike Rack, Got it, and move on" Without something else to work with, like a vintage bike or some kids playing marbles over to the side, I just don't think you can do much more with this than you have done.
Technically:
There are several technical aspects of this image that can be enhanced.
Lighting. The top of the image is over exposed. Images like this are sometimes hard to deal with. You have dark areas under trees and bright areas in the clearing. Many times the camera you are using just doesn't have the dynamic range to handle shots like this. Without digitally editing your image using a photo editing package you just won't be able to get some images correctly exposed. And if the image is too light or too dark, even post processing may not help. If the pixels in one area are all white or all black, you just can pull the detail back out.
I had a little extra free time, so I spent more time than usual on this feedback. I hope that you find some of this information helpful. Keep that camera with you as much as possible. You never know when you going to see a great shot. And it doesn't matter how great your camera is if you don't have it with you. |
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