Hi and welcome to another Image Critique, thanks David for sharing this great image with us. David recently moved to Darwin and I am guessing this image is from that area.

Welcome to another image critique, this month we thank Alan Daniel for sharing his image of Empress Falls with us. Alan says he has shot this many times but on this particular day there was a bit of fog around, he admits he's not totally happy with the image and frustratingly can't put his finger on it. It is certainly going to be an interesting image to critique... here goes.

Hi and welcome to the October Image Critique, a big thank you to Andrew for sharing his image with us.






Image Details:

Camera ~ Canon EOS
Lens ~ 17-35  @ 18mm
f5.6 - 1/640th sec - 100 iso -
WB - Custom 4800K
Image captured as a RAW

OK so this image is a bit different to other Landscape images that I have critiqued so I'll take a slightly different approach.
First lets look at the image in terms of technique and colour.
It is a good capture where Andrew has been mindful of a faster shutter speed to freeze the action. He has had to shoot quite wide to get the kite in. The custom WB has caused the image to be very BLUE, which could be a personal thing, also I think the image has been stretched as the person in the shallows looks that way, I could be wrong !! I'm guessing Andrew may have used a polarizer to cut some of the glare off the water, and there is fantastic detail in the sky, so a good tonal range has been captured.
BELOW is a cropped version, I have cropped the wave out in the foreground and resize to squash back to what I think looks normal. I think the square format adds a new dimension and there is a nice strong diagonal working between the kite and the observer in the shallows.

So lets talk about why we take photo's. One of the reasons why is to tell a story and I think Andrews picture tells just that. I have to admit I do have a connection with this image as I have windsurfed  since my 30's. I was in Hawaii in the mid 90's when I saw the first Kite surfer and it happened to be the French guy that invented it. The sport was very raw at the time and he was getting launched 30ft into the air and slammed back down into the ocean, I remember thinking phf this sport will never take off. Oh how I was wrong. Windsurfing and Kiting is a really hard sport to learn and so this image really brings back a lot of memories learning and seeing others on the same journey. For that reason I love this image and think it is very powerful, however I'm not saying it will wins awards. Some images ring true with us, others don't. But it is important that we make images that have meaning and that we view images with an open mind. One element in this image that really tells the story is the guy in the shallows, watching and encouraging the young kiter, take that person out and we lose the whole story. Can you see how important some elements are to an image.
Well done Andrew I think you have captured a great moment and it tells a great story.

Cheers Dean Cooper

Thanks for reading and thanks Andreq for sharing your image with us.
November Image Critique will be open at the start of the month, to submit an image you need to be subscribed to my Newsletter.

Hi, here is Graeme Woods image that I will be critiquing this month. Thanks Graeme for submitting and sharing this image with us.

Image Details:

Camera ~ Sony DSLR
Lens ~ 17-50 f2.8
f16 - 3.2sec - 100iso - AWB (auto white balance)
Image captured as a jpeg

I remember taking this image as it holds quite a few memories for me and another version of it went on to be my biggest selling Limited Edition Print. Let me sort of start at the beginning.

Tagerty River Cascades by Robert Page

Hi and welcome to the July Image Critique. Thanks Robert for sharing this fabulous image to be critiqued.
Robert has mentioned to me that this was one of the first images he made after buying some filters, for this image he used a Lee Little Stopper (a 6 stop ND filter) and a Polarizer.

In this post I would like to talk about "The Rule of Thirds" composition technique. To me this is the one rule that all photographers should learn, it is so simple yet the results can improve an image dramatically. Can I also say that like all rules, it can be broken and it is not one to "Live" by and you don't have to apply it to every image you take.

Hi there, thought I would document a road trip for you. Road trips are always fun and there is normally always a story behind the images. I hope you enjoy it.

Hi

This month we have a great image to critique from Susan Moss in Perth WA, here is what Susan had to say about her image.
I took this image in the Loire Valley last year, and love the colours and reflections. I cropped it a bit, but not much and have done some tweaking in PS Elements