new to photography, please critique

[mckc]

Here is another shot I took while in downtown philly. I'm new to photography and only have a powershot a95 at the moment. I used MF on this one. What do you think about it?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/mckc/flowers.jpg

[mckc]

oops, forgot to move out of people. Sorry.

[cactusclay]

I like it.

[eosster]

Seems unbalance and blown out highlighs.

[juneappal]

The flowers look really cool, and the blurry cars on the left work well for me. The sky is blown out, though, and I find the dark area in the upper right to be distracting.

[mckc]

thanks for the honesty, i'm learnin.

[Gus00]

Very nice..

It shows a good eye for composition and an understanding of Art Photography. Keep with it, you'll learn the technical stuff as you go along.

btw: A slightly larger image is okay in this forum. About 800p on the long side.

[tim]

It's not bad at all, but if you include flower in a shot it has to be exceptional because we see so many flowers.

[serissolutions]

I like it, my only issue is the blown out sky.

[D4VE]

I dont have a problem with the sky personally, the photo is excellent IMO.

[jgbeam]

Even though it is blurred out, the background is still clear enough to be a distraction and doesn't fit the main subject. The flowers are beautiful but deserve a better background.

Jim

[smudge]

Even though it is blurred out, the background is still clear enough to be a distraction and doesn't fit the main subject. The flowers are beautiful but deserve a better background.

Jim

I don't agree, the flowers although just flowers, are more interesting because of their urban background. Beauty in a dull environment.

I think the only reason that the shot isn't completely unworkable is because of the background.
Not all photos have to be technically perfect. Cartier Bresson has a number of fantastic shots where there are blown highlights or dark shadows, the important thing is composition.
I would rather see a flawed interesting photo, than a technically superb sterile flower.

As said above keep working on the art. The technical aspect will come with experience.

[jgbeam]

I don't agree, the flowers although just flowers, are more interesting because of their urban background. Beauty in a dull environment.

I think the only reason that the shot isn't completely unworkable is because of the background.
Not all photos have to be technically perfect. Cartier Bresson has a number of fantastic shots where there are blown highlights or dark shadows, the important thing is composition.
I would rather see a flawed interesting photo, than a technically superb sterile flower.

As said above keep working on the art. The technical aspect will come with experience.

I think we agree more than disagree. The blown highlights didn't bother me at all and I like to see subjects that are at odds with their background. In this case the background just strikes me as a distraction rather than a contrast. Just one guy's opinon. :rolleyes:

Jim

[Huckaback Photo]

MCKC
Welcome to the forum.
Your heading toward a tecnique comonly used for close ups of flowers & indeed many other things, to show something of the plants inviroment this usually works well.
the plan is use a wide angle lens, get up close & personal to the subject , just focus on it so background drops way out of focus etc.
this can take some practice to get right. Stick with it.


Smudge
I agree with all you said.
sure its the background which lets it down with blown out highlights.
composition is quite strong the initial punch or grab (if you like) is provided by the powerful colours, the angular lines/shapes running through the frame also help, creating near triangular format within the picture area.

so how about a bit of photoshop to give a helping hand i expect everyone would create a totally different picture .
so lets see what we can do.
as mentioned above not much pixel width here.



MCKC
hope you dont mind me trying this for you, but theres an image there worth working on well done.
I have cropped, altered tones in background and then popped the colour making a powerful colour stand out even more.

Regards
Martin (Huckaback Photo)

http://www.pbase.com/huckaback_photo

[Huckaback Photo]

Sorry I forgot to put the image in my post above

[mckc]

Hey I dont mind at all. Thanks for all the input. I'll continue to work on the art side of it.

Huckaback Photo-
good job with the photo! what did you do in photoshop?

[neutral]

The flowers look really cool, and the blurry cars on the left work well for me. The sky is blown out, though, and I find the dark area in the upper right to be distracting.
In other words, a crop would make it really nice :)

[Huckaback Photo]

Mckc
to get this image I first in Photoshop used the clone tool to drop in some detail where the blown out high lights (or base white if we viewed a print)
the distance in your shot was well blured so no need to be to accurate with this.
i then burned down the top using the burn tool.
next a small crop off top (this is already a small size image so did not want to lose much more)
the easy bit..I have an action set up that converts image to black & white but as soon as done you can paint back the colour wherever needed & at whatever percent you require.
finally put some unsharp mask & save for web.
Martin

[mckc]

dang, that sounds like alot of work. Maybe I should start messing around with adobe some more to. Does anyone on here do professional work?

[Huckaback Photo]

Your looking at a 5 minute process once you have it sussed. (a first time who knows )
some of the power of photoshop is when you start using actions & batch processing.
If you have not used actions before just open an image and check out the default actions .
select one and hit the triangular play buttton near the bottom.
you would bennefit from a good ps book to guide you.

The book I would recomend, " Al Wards PHOTOSHOP PRODUCTIVITY Toolkit" withover 600 actions
ISBN 0-7821-4334-2

Cheers Martin