Image doctor: The critiques!
A regular part of Australian Photography magazine for more than a decade, the Image Doctors, photo educator Saima Morel and professional photographer Anthony McKee, can give constructive feedback on your images, with a selection of their favourite submissions appearing in print in AP mag every month.
If you want feedback on your images (it's free!), you can find out the details for submission here.
This month's winner
TITLE: Too Beautiful to Die
PHOTOGRAPHER: Michael Maher
DETAILS: Fujifilm X-T3, 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8 lens @ 55mm. 1/1000s @ f3, ISO 3200.
“I had seen the dying branch some days earlier and marked it as a possible photo subject, but the weather was bright and sunny, not what I wanted at the time. The subject, which was a couple of yards from my front door, was still in place a day later when a powerful storm dropped in on our house. Camera in hand I fired off a few frames from the dry comfort of my front door. Some of my settings were not as perfect as I would have liked but luck was with me, and the X-T3 gave me what I was looking for. Not much post work need.”
Hey Michael, there is not a lot I would change with this image - it is beautiful and I love both the design elements and the lighting. Photography is full of compromises, and in this instance you had to compromise the depth of field and ISO to achieve a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the raindrops in the left of the frame.
A small part of me would have liked to have seen a lower ISO used (instead of 3200), simply because low ISO’s often mean better print quality, but in this instance I feel the “frozen” raindrops help make this image. In short, there is not a lot you could change to make this image better. Well done; a lot of photographers will be wishing this was their capture!
Anthony’s Tip: Working at low a ISO usually means better print quality, but somedays you have little choice but to use those high ISO settings to get the best image possible.
TITLE: Glasshouse Mountains Morning
PHOTOGRAPHER: Robert Vallance
DETAILS: Fujifilm X-T30, 18-135mm lens @ 50 mm. 1/55s @ f4.5, ISO 1600, handheld.
“This shot was taken from the Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve in Maleny, Queensland, looking south over the Glasshouse mountains; the Brisbane skyline can be seen on the horizon. The shot required an early morning start to be on site at 04:30am. Three images were stitched together using Affinity Photo to create this panorama, and then a tone map to applied to lighten and colour, with some shadow and highlight adjustment and cropped to remove some green from the bottom.”
Hi Robert, this is a great panorama, and I love the soft purple colours against the green. As always though, there are a few things we could improve on. Firstly, at the risk of sending you up the hill again, I would have shot this image at a lower ISO setting (preferably ISO 100) so that you do not get so much grain in the image.
Next, once I had composted the image I would clone out that knob of vegetation in the very bottom, middle of the frame; it is quite distracting. And finally (and this is the trickiest task of all), I would have just lightened up that dark blue patch of sky in the top right of the picture so that it too was less distracting. With those jobs done, this image should actually look even stronger. Good work!
anthony’s tip: Don’t let the little things compete with your bigger picture! Learn to see the distracting elements in an image, and then learn how to eliminate them.
Title: Conflicted identity
Photographer: Karen Bryant
Details: Leica SL2, Sigma 35mm f/1.4 lens. 1/2000s @ f1.6, ISO 400.
“This image was taken outside the water-wall at National Gallery Victoria as Melbourne started to reactivate post-COVID (and whilst actual cases of the new fourth wave continue to rise). I wanted to use the distortion and shadow effects of the glass and water to represent people seeking to return to some sort of normality in the city, and yet still feeling somewhat isolated, distant and/or cautious of human contact and groups of people.”
Hi Karen, this wall is one of the most photographed walls in Melbourne (that and the walls in Hosier Lane), and so whatever image you make here, it has to be excellent.
Often excellence though, comes down to caring for the details. I do like this image, in fact a mate I studied with many years ago photographed me in front of this wall today, but two small, but very correctable details let this image down. The first is the geometry (those converging joins in the wall).
Making those lines vertical using the geometry tools in Adobe Camera RAW or Lightroom will improve the structure of this image. Next I would crop out the light coloured concrete floor in the bottom of the image. Do both of these things and this image will look significantly stronger. Otherwise, great effort.
Anthony’s tip: Humans like straight, square lines in their imagery - don’t be scared to use the geometry tools in Adobe Camera RAW or Lightroom to improve the structure of an image.
TITLE: Library Lights
PHOTOGRAPHER: Richard Helich
DETAILS: LG Velvet smartphone, 26mm (equiv.) lens. 1/100s @ f1.8, ISO 50.
“Hi here is a photo of our library lights. I like the design.”
Hi Richard and thanks for submitting this interesting smartphone camera image. Smartphone cameras have an advantage over APS-C and Full Frame cameras, simply because their tiny sensors and lenses inherently have better depth-of-field, and this can be very useful when creating graphic images in situations like this.
I love the high contrast treatment you have applied to this image, but the one thing I do find rather distracting is are the busy array of lights at the bottom of the image. For me, most of the design and interest within this image lies in the top light, the pier just below it, and five big circular light in the lower left of the frame.
If this was my image I would apply a square crop that cut into the top of the upper circle and stopped just beneath the lower five circles. Next, I would paint (or clone) out every other light in the bottom of the image so that all you have left was the six circular lights hovering about that central pier as if they were flying saucers hovering about a mothership. Job done.
There are times as a photographer when we have to represent a subject accurately, and then there are those times where we can playfully alter the truth; this images really fits that latter treatment. Have fun with it!
Anthony’s Tip: When it comes to playing with designs, remember you are allowed to quietly “lose” any distracting elements that conflict with your vision of the world!
TITLE: Prince
PHOTOGRAPHER: Anna Zambito
DETAILS: Nikon D3400. Lens unknown. 1/200s @ f5.6, ISO 100.
“I took this photo of my dog Prince while staying overnight at Cape Bridgewater in Victoria. It was a stormy day outside and my dog was looking out the window, contemplating whether he’d be able to go outside or not. I made the photo in colour but decided to do a bit of post-production to try to give it a different appearance. I used Photo Lemur to improve the colours and then used a Lightroom preset to give it a black-and-white appearance. I tweaked the settings and got this final look.”
Hi Anna and thanks for sharing this image. Great photography is all about storytelling, but while you’ve told us above how this photo is about your dog and a storm, you haven’t conveyed as much in your image; and therein lies the challenge of photography. There are a couple things I would do next time to improve this image and the first is just to get down lower in relation to your dog so that you are at eye-level, rather than looking down at it.
Looking down on people and pets can be unsettling for all concerned, which is why eye-level is perfect for pets, children and adults. Having made a few shots from a lower perspective, I’d have then moved behind Prince and used a slightly wider lens to try and capture Prince silhouetted against the storm outside. Otherwise, good effort.
Anthony’s Tip: Given the opportunity, always try and be at eye-level with your subject; it helps establish some equality between the viewer and your subject (even if they are a Prince!).