Images for Constructive Review

[goamules]

This is going to be a long thread. That's my review.

[Ken Lee]

Damn. Which areas in the image look like they're dodged to you?

Since you asked, here are the areas which seem conspicuously dodged to me.

[macolive]

Since you asked, here are the areas which seem conspicuously dodged to me.

You're wrong Ken! All the areas that you didn't mark up were burned in! :-) just joking.

[John Rodriguez]

Interesting. Here's what's actually going on.

[John Rodriguez]

Mea Culpa - I went back and looked and I had contrast layer on I thought was gone. Here are three stages - no local adjustments, burned in edges, and the final stage which includes more constrained local contrast adjustment. Does the final stage still appear over cooked?

Thanks,
John

No local adjustments



Burned in edges



Local contrast

[Michael Graves]

Riverbank - Downie River, Sierra City, CA

This is a beautiful image. If there is one thing I would change, it is that I would drop the contrast just a hair and perhaps try to make the foreground trees just a little richer.

[tuco]

...If there is one thing I would change, it is that I would drop the contrast just a hair ...

Perhaps it is not fair to judge brightness and contrast when looking at a computer monitor. No doubt your monitor's contrast and brightness is not the same as the OP's monitor which the image was edited on. At least that is how I see it looking at my images at home and a work computer. There is a very noticeable difference in contrast between them.

[fishbulb]

A nice image, but not a great image.

Nice colour, sharp, well exposed, but no strong centre of interest or obvious subject.

Attachment 140437

So is this the next one for constructive review in this thread?

My thoughts/opinion: The subject is obvious, and centered in the frame. For me, the heavy vignetting don't really add anything, since the subject is already very centered, and there isn't a lot of distracting detail in the corners that the vignette can draw the eye away from. The quality of the background blur is great, the exposure is solid, but it's hard to really say what the image is about.

If this is a still life object study, to me it feels like it's not close enough, and the out-of-focus areas of the subject (front edge of the cup, top of the left brush) limit some ability to see the fine details. If this is a storytelling still life image, I'm not sure I can tell what the story is - maybe a few more objects in the frame (paint, canvas, etc.) would tell more of a story.

So yeah, maybe a few words of explanation on each image put up for constructive review could help get the conversation started for each image.