Thread 4473516

i've been trying to move out of my comfort zone of shooting in my house, but since i cant control light outside, i dont really know how to improve the images if the light isnt favorable. i dunno what i even think is wrong with this image, it just feels like it could be better

>>4473516 (OP)
Reminds me of source games

>>4473516 (OP)
You are autistic. Give up.
Also, start writing properly to mask your disgusting autism.

>>4473516 (OP)
Fix the distortion, get rid of vignetting, make sure foreground is sharp. Picture is a bit flat maybe.

I think if you raised the camera up higher it would look better also. Maybe simplify composition a little. The boat is pointing in an unsatisfying direction imo.

In regards to favorable light outside you need to scout first then plan a time to go out when you do have favorable light. Look at weather reports and sunset/sunrise timings. That's it. Wake up early and catch the sunrise.

>>4473516 (OP)
Its a cool photo, but me personally would have attempted to capture it in a way that hid the buildings in the background. That is probably just me being autistic though.

>>4473516 (OP)
Don't use lighting outside as an excuse, there are good opportunities in all weather to take great shots
There's a lot to improve on on the technical side, but you're probably just starting out
What you choose to include or omit in the frame is like 80% of what makes an image look good
The way you've composed to shoot just feels too busy to me, like you're trying to include everything because you feel you need to. If it doesn't add to the image, leave it out. There's lots of opportunity in this scene for crops that I feel work a little better, picrel, and there are some great opportunities for verticals too.
The darkness of the shadows doesn't match well to me with the brightness of the clouds, those either need to be darker too or make the whole scene brighter, also like pricrel

>>4473547
Good post.

>>4473522
Terrible post, wasted get

>>4473516 (OP)
This is a decent newbie shot. Focus on what's important in the frame, and compose and expose with that in mind. In this one, for example, the boat stands out. Get closer to the boat and see what you can do with it. Fall leaves in the water are always pretty; focus on what you can do with them. It's hard to tell, but it looks like some sort of grass over on the right; see what you can get there. Etc., etc.

A fun exercise is to see how many shots you can get from one location. Don't be picky until you get two that are similar enough to have to choose between them.

>>4473516 (OP)
Lots of movies in production do something called 'location scouting' which means checking out and learning the land so they can plan out the exact best time to come back when the lighting and condition is perfect for the real thing. Congratulations. You've location scouted your area.
You can't control the light but you can remember where this is and come back when the light is good.

>>4473516 (OP)
so what's the subject there?

>>4473526
nice try at polishing a turd
also stop giving advice when you're a beginner or a completely clueless talentless retard

>>4473629
i was kinda liking the boat so i aligned it with the rule of thirds, but i guess i couldve gotten closer. the boat is pointing at a different direction, so i thought maybe that kind of creates something that the eye would look at. like an anti-leading line, idk

>>4473674
You shouldn't have cut the reflection of the boat.

>>4473676
oooooh i didnt even think of that! that's a really good point, thanks!

>>4473674
the boat is far too small to be the subject. also the bright skies instantly attract your eye. you want your subject either to be the first thing your eyes notice - or you want elements leading the eyes to the subject. in your image this isn't working. the boat is far too dark and tucked away in a dark corner. the leading lines lead ironically to the bright skies in the background.
"half-sunk boat in water" is an iconic subject. look up how others shot it. then go back and try to recreate it. yes, it wont be your image but you will learn a lot by just recreating the shot. have a nice day

>>4473630
>you should have just said it was a shitty picture!
Seething over good advice is the sign of a jealous beginner. Stop projecting and get on my level noob. Kek

My thoughts without reading the thread, and without claiming to be an expert or anything.
I think the main problem here is that you couldn't decide what should be your subject, the boat or the scene itself.

If you wanted to capture the boat, you should have focused your composition around it.
Make it bigger, brighter, go around a bit and search for a better angle, think what other elements can accompany the boat (like the trees framing it) without taking the focus away from it, and what elements do distract the viewer from your subject (like very bright background). Think what you can do about that.

And if you wanted to capture the scene "as a whole", then first of all, that is a lot harder than just focusing your photo around one subject, because "capturing the scene" actually means finding several different subjects and building a composition from them.
So you have to do the above process of making sure each subject is prominent and interesting enough to be called a subject, and then you have to frame them all together in such a way that they don't steal focus away from each other, but at the same time kinda "lead" the eye of the viewer to one another.
This is something I struggle with myself, finding a great scene with many different elements contributing to it's beauty, and trying to capture all of them together at once.
It's a lot easier to just select one element and work with it. Easier, but not trivial as isolating a good subject can be a challenge by itself.

Looking at your photo and trying to build a scene, there is some potential. The boat, the tree on it's tiny island, the reeds and maybe even the trees with commieblocks in the background could all be composed together, properly exposed and turned into a "scene".

>>4473858
And here's an example where I think I was able to capture everything this great, beautiful scene had to offer that day in a single image, without it turning into a complete clusterfuck.
I like every element of it and don't really want to add/remove anything.

>>4473867
needs more HDR boomer

>>4473878
What exactly are you complaining about?

>>4473516 (OP)
>can't control light outside
never heard of flash? anyways, composition is good but as others have suggested, you might have done better angling lower to not clip the reflection. also, this would center the boat more and trade some bland distant clouds for some pretty nearby leaves on the water

>>4473858
>>4473867
that's a bunch of good advice but this pic isn't doing you any favors. i'd rather look at op pic over this any day of the week

>>4473886
>'d rather look at op pic over this any day of the week
It's fine to have bad taste, but if you think OP's pic is actually "better" you are visually illiterate

>>4473886
>>4473878
Okay, let me first tell you why I like my photo, and then you will tell me why it's actually shit.
Lets start with the obvious, the reason I went to the waterside that evening - majestic sunset with dramatic clouds.
I like how I was able to capture both, the sun to the right, warm and bright, illuminating every layer of the scene.
The clouds to the left, cold and dark, balancing it out. Interplay between the two in the middle and everywhere, the gesture of the cloud "reaching" for the sun, almost covering it but not quite.

Next, the background. On the left, the farthermost commieblocks perched a top of the hill, cold and blue, with just a bit of sunlight to make them less flat.
On the right, sunlit silhouettes, the sun dominates everything, without destroying the scene. Which is why the anon complained about HDR, probably.

In the middle, another big subject, a new district in the process of being created where once there was an overgrown park, completely abandoned by the authorities.
Still, I loved that place, a piece of wild nature in our big city.
It's semi-built state lets more light in, creating some nice highlights together with the mirror-like surface of buildings already finished. The exposed skeletons of those giant, man-made constructions make it more interesting as well, at least to me as I like machinery, industry and other testaments to the power of humanity.
In a way, this photo helped me to resolve the conflicting feelings I've had about the whole park-into-district thing, by showing me how beautiful the whole area can be, a blend of nature and civilization, as even after the construction, there will still be plenty of greenery around.
Which is the next, albeit humble, layer/subject. I like it for the aforementioned blend, the fact that it adds another color to the palette, and all of the beautiful highlights.
1/2

2/2
Next, the river which by itself would just be another layer that adds some more volume and colors with all them reflections, a nice addition but that's about it.
But what I really like is that swimming pool, because together with it not only does this river reflect the picture above, it also reflects the idea above, the blend between natural and man-made, because how well the pool "fits" into the river. It's there, it's different, but because of it's color (which imitates water) and the fact it follows the shape of the river and has water reflecting sky in it, it becomes and organic-looking part of the river.

And lastly, the foreground. Which ties everything together by adding the last missing element of probably the biggest theme of the photo.
It has all of the colors present above. It has a bit of nature, it has some man-made objects, and it has the bridge between the two - humans.
I managed to capture the people enjoying the sunset at the waterside just as I wanted.
None of them close enough to become a distraction, nobody is looking at the camera, not everybody is looking at the sunset either which would be strange.
Everyone is acting casual, natural. Everything is as it should be. What a beautiful evening.

Sorry for any mistakes, as the eagle-eyed detectives among you probably already have deduced by the text in the photo, I'm not exactly a native speaker.

>>4473898
I guess it's like smelling your own farts heh

>>4473903
It seems to me you are the one smelling your own farts here, because words you say contain no thoughts or ideas.
You just open your mouth, let a bunch of empty air i.e. farts out, and close it again.
Are you actually going to say anything, or will you just close the thread and continue sitting in a cloud of your own farts happy about your behaviour?
Do you have valid criticisms? Would you try to capture something else that evening? What elements would you include and emphasize? What elements do you think are unnecessary and why?
Anything at all?

>>4473516 (OP)
Anons are being fags this is a cool moody photo desu

>>4473878
Lmfao got him

>>4473906
you need to kys asap

>>4473916
OP made a thread explicitly asking for his photo to be critiqued, he even made a newbie mistake of asking for "any" critique, exposing himself to the "lmao xD u suck" crowd, which judging by a few posts above has finally arrived. Although it's probably just one samefag.
But your own post is barely even better, as you don't offer anything OP asked for.

>>4473898
i think your photo is technically proficient, but not especially nice to look at. it's clean and bright, like a marketing photo for a waterfront property. OP pic isn't as meticulously composed, but as a whole, it is much more satisfying. this is subjective of course. my only point is that technical proficiency is important to get you in the ballpark, but beyond that, returns diminish sharply. you can perfectly compose any scene you want, but this isn't going to make me care about a scene that simply is not very interesting. maybe the elements have significance to you because you live there, but none of this context comes through the image. you list elements and justify them as symbols, but do not justify them as visual elements. a photo isn't good because it has good things in it . it's good because the things in it look good together. and personally i think your pic would look better with a lot of pieces removed. this is not to discount the advice you give OP. i just want to add that making good pictures goes beyond exposition and tidiness

>>4473867
This is a good photo. It tells a story. You did good.

So why does /p/ hate it?

OP, it's worth noting that a current leftoid instagram and "woke right" (authoritarian socially conservative commie) trend is hating anything with dynamic range because it's associated with wealthy white peoples photography. AKA "boomer photography". Boomer just means successful straight white people now.

Wealthy white people aka "boomers" can afford cameras that do not have to select between white sky and black foreground, and can do things that zoomers oddly can't like edit raws on a computer (zoomers call this "wasting hours editing every photo"). That is all that's pissing them off. It's associated with successful straight white people.

Most of the advice you're receiving is tinged by this. Award winning photographers post "HDR boomer slop", aka white person with money photography. the internet fags hate it but they're not the ones handing out the awards. These people literally have wealthy white guys with nicer equipment than them living in their heads rent free. All they do all day long is complain about wealthy white peoples cameras
>SNOY IS SHIT!
>NIKON IS GEARFAG!
>CANONBLOB!
>FUJI OVERPRICED!
They will also shit on anything with bokeh, anything that's too high resolution, etc. /p/ would literally seethe at most photos that actually win awards and sell for $$$$. They even hate rhein II and burtynsky. They hate annie leibovitz. They hate successful white guys like stephen shore. They worship weird and impoverished asian photographers mostly.

Now watch as they prove me right and say something about "gearfags" (also another word that is basically just a proxy for wealthy straight white people) or god forbid, post antisemitism.

>>4473933
Yes sweetie, overspending yts are bad photographers. Cheap cameras have soul. Rich people dont make good art.

Fuck off now, consoomer. Go give your money to the elites somewhere else.

>>4473931
Thank you, I accept your criticisms.
As I have already said, I find this type of photography very hard.
Trying to convey this entire magnificent scene full of things I find beautiful for many different reasons with just one image.
I still think that I managed to do it in this one, without it devolving into a disjointed clusterfuck, and I did explain why I think they all work together creating a harmonic-enough visual composition.
Maybe it does come to personal preferences.
Judging by your preference for OP's photo, you like negative space, black shadows, moody skies, flat colors.
But to me, it just doesn't offer much to look at, and without a strong subject to capture my attention I immediately start analyzing it technically and boom, it falls apart.
I kinda find this >>4473547 series (together as a whole, not individual photos by themselves) more compelling, especially when viewed as thumbnails without trying to pay attention to details.
Maybe next time I'm in the mood for some difficult scene I'll try to make it a series of simpler compositions instead.
Anyway, OP said he just wanted to capture the boat, so none of this "scene-as-a-whole" gibberish applies really.

>>4473933
Thanks you for positivity, I just hope this thread doesn't degrade any further.
Maybe OP can post some more images of his for people to talk about.
This might quell the upcoming shitstorm.

>>4473927
Time for your atorvastatin boomer

I went back but someone had taken the boat. I looked up online when it was a good time to go shoot (like blue hour and stuff) and i like this one the best. i think the reflection is pretty

>>4473950
Nice and simple, but you seem to be relying on rule of thirds too much.
It's not really a rule, and it's not universal.
If you had something in front of that background (which is the only subject here) like a boat or a tree, you could align it to the rule of thirds and it would probably work well, but I don't think aligning background itself does.

>>4473957
it's really funny you say that because that is exactly what i was thinking about, but the boat was gone and the tree had fallen over. maybe i could've stacked some rocks lol

>>4473950
>>4473958
When you have nice reflections and symmetry centering often works better.
Also use a tripod when the light is low, here it looks like you either pushed the ISO or weren't very stable, there's a weird blur

>>4473516 (OP)
perspective and framing are boring, just using rule of thirds won't magically make your pics better
and you need to learn how to do post processing
have you just started shooting?