CROP CAREFULLY
John Wallace said that living in the Barossa Valley
certainly has its advantages “as I found when heading to
take a bright yellow landscape shot. On arriving I noticed
a couple of horses in the opposite side of the field and
took a couple of shots when one of them was curious
enough to see what I was up to. The original shot has been
cropped to letterbox to remove some distracting trees and
concentrate more on the yellow plants, I offset the horse
when taking to improve the composition.”
I like the off-centre composition with the horse and the
out-of-focus flowers in the background, but the brown
things protruding out of the flowers on the left are little
spoilers for the lovely effect of all that lovely yellow and
green. If you had to crop, you were probably too far away,and if possible needed to get in closer to shoot - carefully
of course, to avoid spooking the horse. The horse is just
not sharp enough, and you needed to focus on the eyes
and head when shooting. The flowers provide a lovely sea
of colour but the horse is the stand-out interest in this
scene so it needs to be as sharp as possible.SAIMA’S TIP: The more cropping there is of an
image, the result is there are fewer pixels and a
subsequent loss of quality. TITLE: Just Curious
PHOTOGRAPHER: John Wallace
DETAILS: Canon EOS 760D, Canon EFS 18-135 IS lens
@ 85mm focal length, 1/200s @ f11, 200 ISO.IMAGE DOCTOR
BY SAIMA MORELIMAGE DOCTORImages need a pick me up?
The doctor will see you now.
THE LITTLE THINGS
Anthony Kassulke said that
he had been experimenting
with two of his lenses and
graduated filters when he
took this shot. It was adjusted
using Elements “to bring out
the foreground”.
Since you had grad filters
and a tripod, this would have
been an ideal opportunity for
really long exposures of 30 or
60 seconds to get a really nice
smooth silky surface on the
water. It would provide a nicer
background for that unfortunate
fake-looking rocky foreground
with its colour issues - splodgy
blue and purple tones. I also
don’t like the post on the right
in the foreground... However,
the main issues here are the
rocks, the limp colour and the
weak clouds. None of them
provide much impact as subject
matter. While you have followed
the rule-of-thirds composition it
is just not enough.SAIMA’S TIP: Great landscape
photography comes when all
the seemingly small elements
come together harmoniously.TITLE: Sunrise on Stradbroke Island
PHOTOGRAPHER: Anthony Kassulke
DETAILS: Canon 70D: EF-S17-55mm f2.8 IS USM lens @ 17mm focal length, 1/6s @ f20, 100 ISO, two stacked graduated filters, Manfrotto Tripod.