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Does this work? (1 Viewer)

paula

Well-known member
This is my try at being artistic!
Does this work with members. It is so difficult to judge one's own work objectively!!
 

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Hi paula,

Don't know much about photography, but I claim to know a little bit about art.

Of course, art is just about as subjective as you can get, but this doesn't really work for me.

In my opinion, it's all a bit fussy, and the swan is just too big. There's almost too much to look at. Also, because it appears you have concentrated on a close subject, the background is "neither nowt nor summat" - it's neither completely plain nor particularly intricate.

I reckon the eye is in just about the right place - although it perhaps could do with being about half an inch to the left. I think the reflection in the eye is nice, though.

Is this the complete image, or have you cropped it down? If you could take the cropping out a bit, make the swan smaller and reposition the eye - you might also lose some of the fussiness, and get a better balanced picture.

I would suggest, however, that you wait for a few more opinions, and most of all do what YOU want!

Hope this helps!!!
 
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I agree with Birdman to a certain extent Although I have no claims to expertise in artistic things, I have taken a dilettante interest in art and take some care to compose my pictures where possbible. However I am still very much on the learning curve myself. It seems to me that the balance is not quite right. The picture is very stong on the the left but there is little to balance it on the right.
If the picture was cropped, you might post the the full picture for us so that we could try cropping it afresh. We could then compare our subjective judgements. If you don't like that then someone (maybe me, if I can find something suitable) might put up a picture and let others do what they can with it
 
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Hi Folks,
Thank you so much for your feedback. Such a good way to learn to evaluate one's own efforts. Looking at the picture above afresh I feel that you are right and it is just not quite right. The picture was taken last night, just to try out my new 1D, so the composition or anything was not carefully done. When I saw it on the computer I thought that I could try an artistic impression with it. But.......alas.........not good enough.
Interesting if anyone with more artistic flair would still be able to make something of it.
Thanks again.
 

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I just tinkered with the image in adobe photoshop elements to get this. Probably not very artistic, just centered and added the rest of the bird plus reflections and removed the other part bird.
 

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Fascinating Steve. I had thought of trying something like that myself since I too felt the need for more of the bird. Indeed, the aspect ratio of the original gives the impression that something is missing anyway and that it is still somewhat cropped.
However, here is my effort:

Using Paint Shop Pro I have cropped first. Then I decided to try to lighten the water by selecting the swan, inverting the selection and increasing the brightness. I inverted again to increase the contrast in the swan itself a little. I am not sure that the latter change is really an enhancement but I have left it in. The result is a bit 'square', however.
 

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Hi
I think the big problem here is that the original image has been shot from the wrong viewpoint, this does not allow a ballanced crop because the water in the background intrudes across the centre of the frame from top to bottom. The original crop of yours Paula did not have space to the front of the swan therefore it had no room to 'move' in the picture. I had a little play by copying the head and neck, mirroring the body of the swan and then pasting the head back in place, then cropped to show how I would see the picture working best.
The picture on the left being the shot.
Nigel
 

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Nigel, you are a true artist.
Thank you for showing us that in spite of all the minus points there could still be a plus point, if only one was blessed with an artistic flair.
Of course you are right about the angle! I will always try and remind myself that the bird has to have room to go somewhere.
Lawrie and Steve, thank you also for your contribution.
 
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