Posting some shots I took at the scrap yard for critique.
>>2847648
>>2847648
Why did you allow the narrow depth of field? My eye wants to look at the bottom car in the middle and it's almost entirely out of focus. The focus point seems to be the maroon car in the bottom right.
>>2847649
>>2847650
It wasn't intentional. I was working in low light without a tripod. But you're right, that is the case. I used 5.6 in most of these shots thinking it would be shallow enough. Something I'll have to keep in mind for next time, thanks.
>>2847653
>>2847654
I regret cutting off the side mirror in this one.
>>2847657
>>2847660
>>2847662
That's everything worth posting.
I think the lighting on these does a fantastic job of adding some seasoning to the images. Great choice there. Some of your compositions are a bit lopsided which feels uncomfortable, and I can't find the reason for most of them to be square crops, as it doesn't seem to suit the compositions you've gone for.
Your colors are really nice (product of the light, and your nice processing)
Overall, it feels like you have too many photos. There's not much unique between them, so having 10 without much of a story or anything to get into seems excessive.
I really enjoy:
>>2847648
>>2847649
>>2847657
>>2847664
>>2847665
Thank you very much for your crit! I shoot 6x6 so all my comps are square. Looking at them now they do feel lopsided. I was shooting rows of cars so I wanted to get a few long shots and I suppose that leads itself more to 3:2.
I only like around 5 of the images but wanted to post them all so I could get feedback on my bad ones. Again, thanks.
>>2847669
When composing for square, unless you have good reason to, you should stick to balanced composition. Symmetry, or square shapes, things like that. So for instance, a single car is about twice as long as it is tall. So two cars stacked on top of each other would be about a square shape. So shooting that from straight-on to the side of the cars would frame very well, and leaving room on the edges for the stacks in front and back, and a bit of ground and sky for context would work very nicely.
Fun fact = 6x6 wasn't ever really meant to be displayed at 6x6. It was meant to give you the ability to shoot 6x4.5 either landscape, or portrait, without having to turn the camera (and therefore the viewfinder) by cropping out the extra.
So if your compositions don't lend themselves to 6x6, feel free to shoot a bit wide, and crop them down to where they should be, aspect ratio wise.
I'm having trouble placing the film because I don't have that much experience with too many varieties as I stick to what I know, but... Provia?
>>2847672
Thank you very much, I'll definitely keep that in mind when I shoot this weekend. Nah, Ektar. Glad you thought it was slide though.
>>2847684
Yeah I never bothered to try Ektar, and the dynamic range seemed pretty extreme for slide, but the coloring had me thinking provia.
Either way, looking forward to seeing what you come back with next week.
>>2847689
Cheers, I primarily use Ektar as it's much cheaper than slide to get processed for me, otherwise I'd mainly be using slide. Great saturation and the lighting is quite moody. Shot a roll of Provia once and it was some of my best work.
Here is my Instagram if you're interested.
https://www.instagram.com/photos_from_daniel/
>>2847701
I looked through you IG stuff. Your photos where you focus on the color are really nice to look at. The ones where you don't are a lot more disappointing.
>>2847711
How do you think I could improve? Maybe I should give some b&w a go?
>>2847717
Well when there's the crazy color to look at in the images, it's enough of an interest to carry the photo. It becomes the subject. Without it, your shots lack any "grab". The light tends to be bad, the subject tends to be boring, and there's not much going on in the shots, so there's nothing notable about them. Working on making sure your shots have something notable in them to a detached viewer will go a long way. If the light is bad, the subject has to be that much better to make up for it.
I'm talking about the "guy sitting on a bed smoking" photo, and the "street light in the night time" photos in particular. Also, the "cross against the sky" and the "BMW in a parking lot" shots.
>>2847725
Could you please explain how my lighting is bad and how I need to improve it?
>"guy sitting on a bed smoking"
First mushroom trip, hence the slow shutter. Guess non of that really comes through though.
>"street light in the night time"
>"BMW in a parking lot"
You're right, these subjects are meaningless. I try to inject meaning and atmosphere into my shots but I have trouble finding actually interesting subject matter. I guess I need to plan trips with a clear aim in my head of what I want to capture.
>"cross against the sky"
Bad photo, might delete this one.
I'll give b&w another go and use this to focus on the other aspects of my shots besides colour.
Thank you for the advice.
>>2847745
>Could you please explain how my lighting is bad and how I need to improve it?
"good" light is usually strong enough to leave a noticeable range between highlight exposure and shadow exposure. It's also generally directional, to allow it to cast shadows, which are how shapes are defined in a 2D image.
When light is "bad" it's usually all non-directional ambient light, where it's all reflected off of everything in the room/environment, and therefore, it's all fairly even exposure, with no highlights or shadows. it fills everything in, so there's no shape, and no direction. It leaves things very flat and dull looking. Colors don't usually pop out much, which is exacerbated by the fact that most "bad light" sources are low gamut sources that only put out orange-ish light, so you can't get nice skin tones, and colors end up looking strange.
>I'll give b&w another go
I love black and white, so don't take this as a condemnation of that idea, but don't just drop to black and white as a crutch when you don't have any nice colors. Black and white photos still need great light, and good interesting subjects to make them interesting, and in many ways, it poses unique challenges that aren't present in color shooting. For instance, when you're shooting plants and grass and trees, you have different shades of color to differentiate leaves and blades of grass, but in black and white, it's all just smatterings of gray, which can just look like crazy busy noise if it's not done correctly. Black and white is all about gradations of light, so if you have bad light with no gradients, your black and white will look just as unappealing as your color shots would.
>>2847760
>Black and white photos still need great light, and good interesting subjects to make them interesting, and in many ways, it poses unique challenges that aren't present in color shooting.
Isn't that more reason to shoot b&w since these elements are lacking in my photos?
>>2847766
Making your photos black and white won't change the fact that the photos are lacking them though. If you're going to switch to B&W, and ALSO look for great light and good subjects, then by all means, go forth and multiply, but if you're going to just hit V on the keyboard*, then you're going to be disappointed. That's all.
* - Hitting V on the keyboard in lightroom desaturates a color photo. You may not know that since you're shooting film here.
>>2847769
Fair enough.
