Jared Polin, froknowsphoto.com and welcome to another Rapid Fire critique, where I take
your best ten images and give them a [Indiscernible] [00:00:15] you can submit your best ten images
over on the site, just look for the link that says, submit your stuff.
Now, one more thing, if you have camera gear, which I highly think you do because you're
watching my channel, go download my new free app called MyGearVault.
It's the best way to help you input, organize and protect your gear and it's free.
Go check it out at mygearvault.com and in the Apple App Store, coming soon for android.
The first one here is for the fro from Dalton Adkins.
All right, let's take a look at Dalton Adkins' photos here and see what we've got.
So let's see what it's taken with, EOS 60D, right.
60D with the 18-135 kit lens, which I've used.
It's a very good kit lens.
You can get some fantastic results with it.
First thing I notice is Adkins Media Productions, bottom right hand corner.
Look, watermarks are your own personal preference.
I see the lore to doing them.
I've used them myself.
I don't use them currently, but I could see going back to using them, because you want
people to know that you took the photo.
It's really something that if you're going to do the watermarks, maybe, don't make it
so huge and easy to see; though that kind of defeats the whole purpose of the watermark.
So don't look at me.
In terms of the colors, the colors look great here.
It is a snapshot.
Yes.
It has a very snapshot feel because you look up, you get the picture.
Now in the constructive criticism, which I don't take very well, I would make sure that
I leave less space up here, if this is the focus of the Memphis, Memphis Music is the
focus, I would make sure I get rid of most of this on the left hand side though it could
be good for leading lines in, because I do like how the walls are leading, but I would
maybe like to see the Memphis thing just a little bit higher, but the colors are fine.
It's an okay picture, nothing super-duper special and fantastic.
Let's see, 60D, same thing.
This is more of a snapshot as you can tell.
The background isn't blurred out.
We are at 135 and F25 at ISO400, Holy Jesus, Dalton.
Okay.
So why are we at F25?
One of the reasons we're in F25 is because it's snowing or the snow on the ground, which
means the light is reflecting back off of the ground, which is then bouncing back into
your camera telling you that it's super bright out.
You better raise your shutter speed in order to compensate for this.
He's got to be in manual, sorry in auto for this to have F25 going on.
If you're going to shoot outside in the snow, you got to underexpose, you got to know that
your exposure is going to be thrown off by that and then you compensate for that when
you take the picture.
But in something like this, this is too much of a snapshot, not a blowout the background
more even at 125, you're going to need to drop your ISO from 400 down to 100 to the
lowest that it offers you.
You can speed up your shutter speed to compensate for a more wide open aperture, but look even
at 5.6, you would have been able to blow out the background more and get rid of these cars
and I'm not saying, it would have made it a better picture, I mean it would have made
it a better picture, but it's still not a great picture.
It's more of a snapshot.
So bear with me.
Now, this Dalton is a hell of a lot better, except for that freaking watermark in the
bottom corner.
Let me reiterate this one more time.
When it comes to watermarks on your images, I am not anti it and I'm not totally for it.
I'm somewhere in the middle.
I understand the allure, like I said before.
I get it.
Having people see your pictures with your watermark lets them know that you've taken
it.
I've done that in the past as well, but if you're going to do it, it can't really detract
from the image that you're taking or that you're showing.
In this case, look at that, it's showing right down at the bottom.
It's taking away from the nice lightning photo that is a great photo.
So if you're going to put a watermark out there, make sure that it's just -- make sure
that it's not in the way and it's not super easy to see, which may defeat the purpose,
but maybe just take the gradation down, so that it fades away a little bit, cut it in
half to 50% so that they can see.
So this is much better.
Now, we've got a lot of cloud dead space up top, a creative crop could work in a case
like this.
It's pretty amazing though to see the light that is coming across the ground here and
then capturing the lightning.
Fantastic job, capturing the lighting, EOS 5D Mark III, we've upgraded with a 51.8, very
nice job.
That is much better.
Wow, that's much better.
How's the next one?
Okay.
So exposure wise, I think I may know what's happening here.
Yes F1.8, 1/1000 of a second at ISO100.
What's happening here is that this most likely was taken in auto mode, like aperture priority
and what is happening is that the sun, being that it's right in the middle is getting metered
for more than the shade area, which would be this thing of hay.
So in order to come -- I can see that this was brought back in post-processing, because
this just looks not so good over here.
This looks like it was brought back with the shadows, the way that you can get around this
is you're exposing for the shadow area, not for the highlights.
In this case, the sun is the highlight and it's throwing off your exposure.
That's why you're at 1/1000 at F1.8, but there's no reason to be at F1.8 for something like
this.
You could shoot at 2.8 or 3.5.
This would be in focus and the entire background would still blow out of focus.
When I say blow out of focus, I mean the Boca area, blown out, that would go away, because
it's so deep.
That's what happens with Aperture.
It expands.
The higher the number, the smaller the amount of light your lighting in, the more everything's
going to expand.
The smaller the number like 2.8 or 1.8, the larger the opening, the less depth of fields
you're going to have.
You're going to isolate your subjects.
But as the background expands, it's easier to isolate the subject.
So that's my feedback on that is expose for the hay and then process for it.
Now, that's better.
I mean, this is a crop, but I don't care.
It looks great.
The colors are very nice.
The watermark sucks in my mind, just get rid of the water -- do something else with the
watermark.
We need to come up with a way to watermark our images out there some way, maybe I need
to invent some kind of plugin or some kind of thing that puts, but even if you upload
it to Facebook, it's just going to get stripped, something that it's called metadata, I understand
it's metadata, but most people don't know about metadata.
So I don't know.
I'll have to think on that one.
Did I mention that my new app is free and it's called MyGearVault?
Anyway.
Great photo, great colors, great tones, love what's going on in here.
In the case of a photo story, this would look great.
Okay.
There you go, hey, much better, F3.21, 160th of a second, 150 millimeters with the 70-200,
2.8, Holy Jesus, you've seen they've gone from a 60D and they've upgraded and it's made
a big difference, but they still need to know what they're doing.
This is much better.
This is what I'm talking about.
You got your exposure right for this.
It probably should have been close to the same exposure for the hay photo before.
This is very nice.
One thing to consider is maybe move the hay off to the side, the one that's in focus because
I love that this is higher, this is lower, this is lower, this is lower.
So check this out.
If I'm going to draw a compositional box across it, imagine something like that.
Now, I didn't do it right.
Okay.
More so on the case of something like this.
Now, would that make for an interesting photo?
Think of it in the terms of composition.
That would be good.
This isn't bad.
I do like it.
I do hate the watermark.
Next.
What is this?
Why is this in here?
I'm going to talk to you, Dalton personally, me to you.
Nobody else is watching this, just me to you.
You have some fantastic photos here.
I'm just going to point out that this isn't one of them and I don't want you to take that
as I think your photos are terrible.
No, I just think that this photo isn't very good, but your other photos that I've said
are really good are really good.
One, you've got a watermark running all the way across the photo entirely.
Are you worried that the guy's going to take the photo and use it?
Maybe, this was a mistake that you put this here.
But look, you've got great photos.
This isn't one and get rid of a watermark -- if you're going to have a watermark, don't
do this to it and that goes for everybody else who's now watching again, don't do a
watermark like this.
If somebody is going to take your photo, let them take the photo in this day and age.
That's going to help you more than doing this.
That's going to piss people off.
All right, so criticism on the photo.
Let me tell you how to make it better, how to make this one better.
One, get the action coming towards you.
Right?
Action going away would be good.
If the guy was on the ground and he's hurt and his head's down or something or his leg
is broken and it's hanging there, that can work.
If they're running towards you, that's going to be good.
But I just don't understand this photo at all.
I'm curious about what these banners are though with people's photos on them in the background.
That's why I got to get off of that photo.
There you go.
That's really good.
That's much better.
So that's the -- is that -- they're not the Blue Angels there.
I forget what they're called, but anyway they're crossing.
It's an air show right, they're crossing, good timing, looks good.
Nice job.
Nice exposure, nice creative crop.
What lens was it?
It was a 70-200, 2.8, which is a little short on the full frame for shooting airplanes.
It's just the nature of the beast.
Moving on to the next one.
So we've got a combined here.
I want to go spend time on a farm and I want to go tell the photo story.
What would make this photo story better?
This photo itself in a nice black and white processing could be better or with more contrast
for the color pumping up the John Deere green could make it better.
This is just not processed right.
It's a nice image capture.
It tells a nice story, because you've got the combine.
You've got the silos in the background.
You've got what I think is wheat, right.
So the other stuff before wasn't hay, it was wheat, but does wheat make hay or I'm not
a farmer, though I would like to go on a farm one day and do some farming stuff.
So I think a high contrast black and white would be superb.
I also think a better process color would be better as well.
So this is looking into a silo.
In part of a photo story, it would be much better, but it's not that great of a shot
for a photo story.
If you came and got a different angle, if you got some of the -- okay, what would make
this shot a million times better is if you stepped all the way back and shot wider and
didn't use a 70-200, even if you broke out a wider angle lens, a 24-70 if you have it,
16-35, whatever you have, get a wider shot, get a large swath of the silo in there.
If not the entire thing with the guy peeking in the door in black and white.
That would be my suggestion for that.
So those are the ten photos that I just critique, some -- like these color ones, this section
and this one, not this one and this one, you're showing major promise here and even with this
combine one.
So Dalton, you're doing a great job, right.
Take this as positive feedback.
I know I suck at getting it when people give it to me, but I'm just saying that you've
made great progress from when you had the 60D to now having the 5D Mark III with the
better pieces of glass.
Great job with some of them, stick to that, work on your processing to make stuff become
more alive, play with the black and white versus the color, look for the different angles,
the wides, the tights, the mediums and the details, tell the photo stories of the farm,
personally send me back that I want to see you do a photo story of the farm if you can
and then e-mail me, jared@froknowsphoto.com with a link to 10 more photos that tell a
photo story of a day on the farm.
I want to see that and I'll critique that again and send that back.
Take this criticism that I gave you here and put it towards that and that's your assignment
out there, Dalton.
And if you'd like to submit your best ten photos for a Rapid Fire Critique, Fro Critiques,
bit.ly/frocritiques.
It’s up on the screen.
Take a look.
It's in a book.
It's -- you can submit.
I can't guarantee that I'll get to everyone, but that's it guys.
Thank you much.
Thank you very much for watching.
Jared Polin, froknowsphoto.com.
See you.