Photo Contest

[reboundstudent]

Hi ho everybody. I'm entering a photo contest, but I'm having a hard time deciding which photos are actually, ya know, good. Which ones do you guys like?

 

Also, this isn't for the contest, but I want to get a wall print of two of these, so I've been mucking around in Photoshop (turning gray skies blue, re-cropping, etc.) Do you guys have any suggestions about ways I could really "pump up" some of the photos? Thank you!

 

Ueno Park:

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Kyoto Path:

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Kyoto Path 2:

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British Museum:

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Big Ben:

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[DrKitten]

Kyoto Path 2 is the best shot. The colors contrast is nice and the path and trees make the composition very dynamic. I just might desaturate the red thing on the left, it pulls the eye away from the focal point. That one and the first Kyoto path would go well together as prints.

 

As for editing, I would mainly use Recovery/Fill Light sliders to tone down the direct sunlight spots, and bring out some detail and texture in the dark areas. Maybe add a bit of contrast, but not much.

[winniethepooh]

Ignore my comments if you don't like them. I'm just a spectator when it comes to photography, I'm not even an amateur photographer, let alone anything close to being professional.

Ueno Park:

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I think this is my favorite of the five you posted. I like the perspective and composition although the leaf in the foreground dominates a bit. The sky is grey which is a shame. Photoshop it blue? Or take it again on a sunny day (early morning or late evening should give you better lighting).

 

Kyoto Path:

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Nice perspective and colors but it's slightly lopsided - I mean the pole on the left has a bit cut off, and there's a gap between the pole on the right and the edge of the photo. Don't know if you can shift or crop it or something to get more balance. It's a shame the characters at the top have a bit missing too. Maybe crop below that and see how it looks.

 

Kyoto Path 2:

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Doesn't really stand out. The statue on the left looks wonky, and the power lines are a distraction. What about cropping out the statue and below the power lines? Then the red poles become more dominant (even more so if you can enhance the color a bit). It looks like a middle of the day shot so the light is unspectacular. If you have an opportunity to go back and shoot a similar photo early morning or late evening, it might look more dramatic.

 

British Museum:

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Bleah. Looks like something someone snapped on a phone camera on the spur of the moment. It's just a photo of a couple of statues and some old tablets. Nothing that makes it stand out. The lighting is screwed in the middle. Not sure if you've lost resolution when resizing or if it's slightly blurry (do you use a sharpen tool when resizing?).

 

Big Ben:

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Nope. The top is missing, it's off-center, the sky is washed out, the bottom looks blurry (resizing problem again?), the clock faces and structure don't seem very clear. Nothing to make it stand out from the thousands of photos of Big Ben that I guess tourists take every day.

[tiredofvampires]

Your first shot (Ueno Park) stands out to me as by far the best. The composition is superb -- bringing the eye dynamically from the foreground leaf, to the pink blossom, to the rooftop, to the furthest hill in a zigzag pattern. The perspective and the angle of the shot are intriguing, and the contrast of the bright pink against the other more muted colors is very effective. I love the interplay between the rooftop and the blossom especially.

 

Because there is so much going on in the foreground and middle-ground, I don't think the background should be competing, so the grey sky works for me. The only thing about it is that it's too uniform in shade. The top quarter of the picture is monotonous, so I'd work on making an overcast sky that shifts in value. I'm not a photographer so I don't know how you could achieve an overcast sky that looks like impending rain, but some basic streaks might work, or subtle cloud formations. Or, you could create a darker tone gradating to lighter on either side. Even an eerie luminosity somewhere by darkening the edges might work. I'd focus on the left side of the sky being more active or dramatic, since the rest of the picture is leaning to the right with focus and attention. So the upper left sky should balance the "heaviness" of the right of the pic.

 

Also, I might darken the layer of trees furthest in the background to pump up the other shades of green more (since the layers of trees aren't contrasting much now) The greens in the foreground are good though.

 

The foreground will pop more if you do this, but the blossom is really popping and I like that.

 

The other shots don't feel like they're at the same caliber of interest. I agree with winniethepooh about the Kyoto and last two shots. I think the first Kyoto shot has more potential because the monumentality is striking, but the cropping could use some work to balance it better. The second Kyoto shot I agree looks too ordinary due to the lack of contrast with the lighting. The last two shots do not offer enough in the way of composition or content that I would do much with them. Focus on the others.

[Generation]

I'm going to be honest so you know what to work on, but I didn't find any of them spectacular. Kyoto path has the most potential but it seems like you didn't use a tripod, or maybe you did, but it still lacked the symmetry that appeals to my eyes. Although symmetry isn't always important, this one is too lopsided. One of the key elements to taking good pictures is having the camera leveled. I think the lighting could have been better too. Lighting is important and a good photographer would wait for the sun or choose an angle that exploits the light.

 

It looks more like you just take out your camera and take pictures of what appeals to you, but not really from an artistic point of view, but more like a point and shoot. That's why I'm not really impressed right now because anyone could do that. Go to Google Images and google "kyoto path" and you'll see a big difference between some of the pictures there and yours. They've got pictures of temples and pagodas but take a look at them and how they were shot. Look at the lighting, some of them don't have much lighting but they manage to contrast the colors in a beautiful way. Also notice the camera is leveled.

 

When it comes to taking pictures, lighting is like the most important thing or one of the most. There's a painter by the name of Claude Monet who painted the same church like 16 times, all at different times of the day, different lighting brings out different colors.

[sidehop]

I'm going to sound critical but a lot of these pictures either are too distracting, doesn't give you an idea what was being taken and few that just have been shot so similar by others.

 

Ueno Park:

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If this was a close up of the flower taking up the frame with the house on the far blurred it would look much better.

 

Kyoto Path:

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This is one of the better one though the ground is not level (see the columns above) which I would try to rotate a bit and crop so that the two columns are filling the left/right edge of the photo.

 

Kyoto Path 2:

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This shot is just is a bit distracting though you can probably de-saturate everything but the red columns perhaps.

 

British Museum:

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Flares and overexposure; I wouldn't consider this one at all.

 

Big Ben:

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Good but it's one of those shots that's been taken by so many people. The originality just isn't there.

 

I would pick photos that you have filled the entire frame; photography doesn't have to be about capturing everything like you'd do in landscape photography. I'm sure you have others that have a unique but interesting point of view perhaps?