DC Critiques Please :)

[grouseking]

I took a few pics along the Tidal Basin in DC and there are a couple that I really like. And you guys give me the best advice...so what can I do to improve?



and this one...

 

[Chip]

I think this is similar to my recent pics of the tree frog. The first pic looks rather sterile/mechanical to me...like it belongs in a text book. The second is much more interesting to me. Is the second the uncropped image ? Maybe not, the boat is too close. Perhaps a slightly tighter lower and righter crop of the second, including the people ?

 

[Mark Schaefer]

I agree with Chip. I like the second image better. The foreground and cyclists add depth and interest. Also the off center monument is a better composition. Perhaps you could crop a bit off the left so that the cyclists would also be off center, and more cycling "into" the photo. In such a cropping you could place both the cyclists and monument near the classic "thirds" positions.

That is an amazing clear sky for DC. So unlike their normal summer long haze.

When I was taking taking photo classes my instructors would always criticize photos with so much "empty" blue sky because the sky was not "interesting". While it is true that some fair (or stormy) weather clouds add interest, I personally do not have a problem with so much "empty" blue sky in photos. In my mind there is good *************** in such expanses of blue. And as I often responded to my teachers' criticism: "Do you know how much hikers yearn for these conditions?!" Hikers will usually smile upon seeing such photos.

 

[Grumpy]

Pictorially, the second photo emphasizes the “verticality” of the monument – how it towers over an otherwise horizontal landscape. That is why I prefer it to the first photo, which is a fairly sterile documentary photo of the obelisk.

I agree with Mark S’s comments re: cropping. The “empty” blue sky he refers to sometimes is called “negative space” in picture composition – a space in the frame in which there is absence of subject matter. I would agree that usually this is something to avoid, but in this photo (#2) it is essential to the impression being made. Thumb rules provide good guidance, but (as we see here) are not to be followed slavishly.

G.