Young Writers Society

Hi, everyone!

So I've been doing a lot of photography lately and I noticed that I haven't posted any in over a year, so I thought I would post some. I'd be very grateful for some critiques - while for a lot of the photos I can't go back and reshoot it, I can edit the photos with photoshop, so I'm open to edits if needed.


This was taken in Iceland on a boat trip and I found it on my hard drive and I didn't know I had it, but I liked it and edited it slightly.




I took this a few years ago and made it black and white before adding a torn edges filter to it on photoshop and removing the background.



I took this at a beach and thought it was quite interesting.


This was by a river that we drank from: (it was a lot like tap water but sweeter, cleaner and without the chlorine)


A volcano:



And some decorative water crystals that I edited on photoshop:



I'd greatly appreciate any critiques on these and ideas on how to improve them. Many thanks!

Hi Ah!

Here as requested to have a look at your photos.

So here we goooo -

1. I like this one, the light in it is amazing and you've composed it fairly well with the object on the little island outcrop thing coming just in line with where the mountains dip into a V. There is something off slightly with the lines but I can't figure out what it is. Maybe it's just the back that the outcrop thing isn't centred...but then you can't do much with that unless it was actually an island. Perhaps maybe I would've given a bit more of the water so you can see the top of the object completely reflected in the water. But like I say...the light is really good.

2. Hmm, there's not too much I can say about this one. It's not really my thing, I like landscapes and what not rather than abstracty things. It's interesting and good to see that you are experimenting in photoshop though.

3. Awe cool! I love the piles of stones. I would maybe have tilted the camera down a touch to allow the stones more room in the frame. The only other thing I can see is there isn't much depth to the image. It's all very grey and this leads it to seem somewhat flat. Perhaps in photoshop you can put a little more contrast into it to rectify this but try not to go too crazy with it!

4. Oooh I like this mist. I think again maybe this could do with a little more contrast as there is a lot of grey. I maybe would've also tried this in portrait to get the neat sweeping lines working better for the eye. That's one bit of advice I can give you. Sometimes...photographing landscapes like this in portrait can be soooo much more interesting. I like to do that a lot.

5. Haha I like how I said about doing landscapes in portrait and then here you are! I like this one and how you've gotten the field in there. I might maybe play around with this one in photoshop to bring the colours up a bit more. Maybe make the gold golder. Sometimes I would just have a play with the levels (not the auto levels! Do not touch those. Make sure it's manual!)

6. Oooh this is quite interesting and mysterious. I'll say again that abstract isn't really my thing but I like this much better than the other one. For some reason I can see it as something for a diamond campaign or something lol

Anywho, there are some good pictures here and definitely you have potential and a good eye so I would just say that you need to keep photographing. Just pop out with your camera every now and then and just take and take pictures.

Hope that was useful

If you have any questions then you know where to find me!

Be

x

Hi! It's been a while since I've critiqued photography but hopefully I can be a little useful

First of all, you're great with a camera! I liked a lot of these. Personally, the 1st and 3rd pictures are my favorite! The colors were great in both and I was staring at them for quite a while. So pretty! I don't have any complaints about either of them, so great job!

My least favorite was the 2nd picture, I imagine it was a rose or something that you edited to just a black and white blob. Really, I don't feel anything from it. It looks like one of those ink blot tests that they use in a psychiatrist's office, haha! I'm sure it was fun to make though x)

Pics 4 and 5 are both very similar. They look like pretty standard shots, nothing really done to spice them up. Overall, I'm getting a gloomy feel from them but the colors mostly seem a bit dull and uninteresting. To improve them, I would edit them to play with the temperature of the scene. Make it more bluish, or cold feeling. It will help us feel more atmosphere. You could also try increasing the color or saturation. I don't know how much you know about photoshop, but I might even try adding a color gradient over the top of the image on low opacity just to give us some more color variation. There are a lot of tricks you can do x)

I love what you did with the ice cubes! Interesting, I would never have thought of that ^_^

Hope I helped! Keep up the awesome work

Wow! These are really nice and beautiful pictures!!
Okay then let us go step by step now...

1) The first pic:-
Things I liked:
a) Those lofty blue mountains! I can imagine then covered with a white sheet of snow during winter times and really its almost like a dream-those mountains there!
b)The play of the light and the reflections and the shadows!....All were in perfect sync with each other.
c) The light house...I loved it. It looks so vibrant and sort of warm in that icy place. Well in the pic, the place looks chilly and icy albeit the light house and it really adds a bit of excitement to the other mesmerizing but dull pic.
d)The green green grass...Even though the grass is not that green in that little island, the shade of it is perfect and belongs in there!
e)The cool blue water! its simply beautiful and it looks so clean!
Things I did not like (much):-
a)The cloudy sky...I don't know what you would have done to avoid the sky but it sort makes the pic glum and gloomy and a bit less cheerful.
b)The stillness of the picture...I think the picture has elements of nature but it is not coming up alive.
Things that could have been improved:-
Well, nothing much could have been done really but, if you could have had some living element in there it would have been nice. Like a few birds(that is if they were not that cold to come out or maybe there were no birds at all ..) flying in the horizon or in front of the mountains or a boy with a kite or something...Anything would have done the trick.
Well, I am tired of reviewing already but I will be back to review the rest. Please don't mind.

Alright Blues, here I am! These were really good, and I'm just gonna go through each and tell you what I though.

1. This one was by far my favorite out of these. I don't know what you did to edit it, but you did a great job. The mountains in the background really add a nice little kick to the picture. The subject matter is great, and the placement of the building (not sure what that is) is really good. The colors weren't too obnoxious or too subtle, they were really good. Great picture there Blues.

2. This one was a little confusing for me. What is this supposed to be? I think it looks like a flower, but I'm not sure. I like how the corners are crisp, and it looks really good. The transition from white to black inside of it was really great, I thought that was really great. This was a good one, I'm just having a tough time deciding on what it is lol.

3. This one was pretty good, but not as good as the rest. I really liked the subject matter in this one, but the big rocks in the background really distracted me from the actual stacks of rocks you were trying to get, and I found my eyes constantly flowing up back to those. Just another small thing, I thought that the little tree in the corner was a little obnoxious, but that was just me. This is a good one, but I'd try to tune down those rocks in the background a little bit.

4. I thought this one was pretty good. The subject matter I thought was a little dull, but the picture overall was good. Like the first one, the mountains really make this look really good. I also like how those cars were in the background, I thought that was great too. I'd just lighten up the colors a little bit, and I think that'd make it a lot better.

5. This one would probably be my second favorite. The subject matter is amazing in this one. It appears that the volcano was erupting, is this true? It looks like there was smoke going down the side of it. That shack adds a little life to it also, make it not appear like, oh look, a volcano. The only thing I would change with this one is I would take off some of the grass/wheat at the bottom. I felt there was a little bit too much of that in the picture.

6. This one was pretty cool. I don't know how to use photoshop very well, but you seem to Anyways, by water crystals did you mean ice cubes? I like this it looks like you stuck them under a UV light, and they are lighting up, which I thought was pretty cool.

Hope these helped, great job, and keep it up,

Fruit