In this video I'm going to announce the winning photo of the photo challenge for
balance and symmetry. Hi my name is Tim shields, I'm a landscape photographer and
once a week I hold a photo challenge where a prize is awarded and you can
enter this photo challenge by joining the TimPhotos Academy group on
Facebook so let's get started this particular challenge was specifically
for balance and symmetry I was looking for photos where there is an equal
amount of weight on either side of the image
so you'll notice today that I'm wearing my Seattle Seahawks football shirt and
that is in honor of our first photo from Tim poi deven from Seattle this is the
Seattle skyline so on this one the constructive feedback is regarding the
composition the city skyline in the middle is the main subject of this photo
it's the yummy goodness right in the middle and it's too difficult to see
it's too small if this photo was zoomed up more and maybe cropped so that the
left side was here and the right side was here then it would enhance the
overall look of this photo now on the other side of the coin if this was
printed 16 feet wide it would look fantastic to be standing in front of it
the detail on this panorama would be would be great but we're talking about
an online photo contest here so that would be my constructive criticism is to
crop this out so that the main subject is really front and center and what
we're seeing in the photo next one is from Johnny Deal another glass ball
photo from Johnny super-creative it's balanced there's symmetry on each
side I really like the photo well done Johnny
next one is from Peter Oh II this is obviously Paris I like this photo in
order to make this like a stunning fine art type of photo I would have liked to
have seen the photo taken with either early morning light or late evening
light the sunrise or sunset this is a mid day photo it looks great but it
could be even greater if it was taken with
blew our type of light this one is from Calogero dimino and he converted this
into black and white and I find this photo to be super interesting it is
balanced left to right it's symmetrical but seeing all these people in the photo
everyone is doing something different looking at something different this is a
really really good photo I I like it a lot
this one from Phil conforte he converted this architectural image into black and
white with a black sky there's nothing negative I can say about this one I I
like it a lot this I could see this printed and framed
and on the wall of an office looks fantastic this one from Gordon Roland
and great job of this bridge the constructive feedback I would give on
this one is that in order to make this a WoW photo it needed to be taken in blue
our light so taken during that time after the Sun has gone down but before
the sky has completely become black as is the case here and you get those big
halos around the lights if this was taken in blue our light I think it would
be an even better photo this one from Jabby sends great sunset
photo from Thailand I think and not much that I can point out on this one here
great light great sky drama in the sky good symmetry got this formation right
in the middle well done this one from tonyamarie really pans and two things on
this one number one is that the distant trees have a little bit of an HDR look
which is possibly caused by too much clarity in lightroom i would increase
the blocks just to have a little more contrast in those distant trees and
since this is a balance and symmetry photo challenge let's talk about how to
line up on a structure like this you can when you're taking the photo and you're
there with your tripod and you see something like this you can see clearly
there are seven boards going across which means that there is
middle board which is this one and if you were to have put your tripod exactly
over this middle board it would give you perfect balance and symmetry now I'm not
criticizing this photo for balance and symmetry it does look great but I'm just
pointing out if if you have a giveaway with the number of boards and you're
trying for that perfect symmetry type of shot then count the boards and put your
camera over the middle one but this one looks really good Tonya so well done
this one is from Erik Oberman from - Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park I
was just there this is a Wow photo look at that reflection look at the sky it it
looks fantastic if I was to improve on this photo
there's something that needs to be cropped out in the bottom left down here
doesn't really detract much from the photo though and it's maybe a little bit
too blue it could be warmed up maybe just a
little bit but it's a great photo this one from Leonid Schekman I like this
photo a lot because this is a nature photo and you can't tell those two swans
where they need to move in order to make this great shot to improve on this photo
assuming Leonid was taking the photo with a high-resolution camera I would
crop everything out like that so that the main subject of the photo and the
reflection is the entire photo I find this foreground or sorry this background
back here and this foreground to be distracting and taking away a little bit
from the beauty of these two birds this is just so artistic all these curves the
perfect symmetry of it like it's it's like a one-in-a-million photo to find
two birds like this assuming it wasn't done in Photoshop and I don't think it
was so that would be my advice is to crop it out so it's just the two birds
this one from also Sylvie from Norway I love this photo
love love love it's like a perfect X see from the top left down to the bottom
right and from the top right down to the bottom left
and it draws the eye right to the middle of the photo you have a leading line
going down the middle and the light source is right here this is an amazing
photo but to improve on it I would be using the brush feature in Lightroom and
I would be brushing this road and increasing the amount of brightness on
the road so that your eye is even more drawn down to the middle where the light
source is I also find that it's maybe a little too dark on the left and the
right the sky looks great wonderful photo excellent job
this one from Nelson Rudy ak another fantastic one from Nelson just a really
minor thing to tweak on this one is that in the sky up in the top right side top
right corner there's some ghosting where the trees are meeting the blue sky and
that is often caused by too much clarity or sometimes caused by dropping the
highlights down to minus 100 so it's just something to watch I find that it
it crops up where a very dark part of the image meets a bright part of the
image and it's and it's something to watch
maybe a little too blue on this water here could be warmed up just a tad but
what a fantastic photo I love it and this one from Allen stud
my advice on this one is that there that you have to ask yourself what is the
main subject of the image what what's the one thing you really want viewers to
look at and for me it's the snow-covered mountain and I find that it's maybe just
a little too low which means there's maybe a little too much of the cloud in
the sky so I would have cropped it just so that this main subject which is the
snowy mountain would actually be in the middle of the photo but this is a
fantastic one maybe it bump up the greens in the foreground as well but
that that's a matter of taste and preference and it's your call
this one is from Daryl Brooks and it's a fantastic reflection he timed it so that
this little fisherman in a boat is within the frame very good photo it to
me has a little bit too much of an HDR look
in the trees I used to love the HDR look but I'm a proponent of a more natural
looking photo now and I would make a recommendation for maybe bumping up the
black slider just a little bit to increase the contrast in this area of
the trees so it doesn't have that HDR look and now we get to the winning photo
so the winning photo is going to Tommy annalee Larson and he took this photo in
Sweden this is what I call perfect balance and symmetry with an amazing wow
factor the I noticed on this one that in our Facebook group this photo had almost
double the number of likes comments and shares as the second runner-up photo and
the people in our Facebook group obviously really loved it
I loved it too it's a very original composition with this perfect balance
perfect symmetry he's got the railing level perfectly
horizontal this long walkway leads the eye down to the middle and it just so
happens there's a sunset bursting exploding out of the clouds right above
the building well done on this one Tommy this is this is absolutely fantastic one
little thing for improvement that I would recommend would be to increase the
blocks it it doesn't need you don't need to have everything in your photo lit in
fact if you want a photo to be even more interesting then don't light it all and
it seems like there's just a little bit too much that's lit maybe underneath and
it's not a problem to reduce that black slider in Lightroom to create some
blacks down there because it would be natural that there would be blacks down
there having said that wonderful photo it's a
well-deserved win on this one i I really love the photo so Tommy wins my
signature profile collection.this is an add-on into
Lightroom cc lightroom classic CC and Photoshop CC and it helps you to edit
your photos faster and easier with less work and Tommy wins this profiles
collection and if you are interested you can see the profiles collection on my
website which is Tim's photos comm and you can buy the collection for $27 so
let's talk about the next photo challenge and the next photo challenge
is four photos taken during the blue hour and what I mean by the blue hour is
the time when the Sun has gone down so you're not seeing an obvious source of
sunlight in the photo but before the sky has gone completely black so you can see
in this photo that I took of Vancouver this is a panorama image we have that
time of the evening we call it the blue hour but it does not last for an hour
there's usually this perfect lighting time that sometimes lasts only five
minutes maybe 10 minutes but it's that time of the evening when the amount of
brightness in the sky usually equals the brightness from cityscape buildings now
the competition is not just for cityscapes it's for any outdoor or
landscape photo but it's that time of the evening or early in the morning when
there is a balance between the amount of light that's in the sky and the amount
of light that's on the land so I'll show you one more example of a blue hour
photo and it's this one that I took here another panorama from Horseshoe Bend in
Arizona and again it's that time the Sun has gone down and the amount of light in
the sky is just about balancing out and becoming equal with the amount of light
on the land so that's our next photo challenge it is for blue our photos you
need to tag your photo with hashtag Tim's photos 1:06 and if you would like
to enter this next photo challenge for blue our photos then just join the Tim's
photos Academy Facebook group and enter your photos in there
thanks very much everybody I will see you in the next video and please make
sure you submit your blue our photos this is a place where we learn about
landscape photography and I'm really enjoying this process and sharing this
journey of photography with all of you thanks so much see you soon