Helpful Critiques #3
Fearless Photographers founder Huy Nguyen and Tyler Wirken share their thoughts on anonymous work submitted by photographers in the Fearless community.
[ Huy ]
I'll say the obvious. This photo has really good light and directional lighting. It's not flat and this looks like a good action, right? It looks like a good moment - good jumping trampoline moment. And it's off the air. It has body language. Good moment and good light.
What does it need? The default answer is good faces. We always want that but maybe the face is not important to this photo. This photo is all about fun. So what do we want and what does this photo need to convey what we want?
[ Tyler ]
The biggest thing that our eye is drawn to is the tennis ball. When you're talking about light moment composition, we have some decent light. The moment is there most definitely. The composition is actually darn close.
I'm not as big on faces as you are. I appreciate this composition. I appreciate the kind of weirdness of it. I like the way that the feet are in terms of giving it some expression. But I keep looking at the tennis ball and I'm like - do I need all of it?
If I had all of that tennis ball, would that balance this composition? My gut says yes, I need the rest of the ball to have a nice balance in this composition. But then would it be too big and too much of the ball at that point? That's where I'm kind of struggling right now. If we just crop it a little bit from the bottom left corner and cut the ball off in a way that feels more deliberate and then shove the whole thing over to the far right of the frame.
Maybe just don't have as much of the ball on there. I don't know. I'm drawn to it as an element in the frame but I keep thinking there's too much of it or not enough of it. I haven't quite gotten a feel for if it's necessary or not in the frame. What would this picture be the same without the tennis ball?
[ Huy ]
How about this? Every time that we have two elements in the photo, we ask ourselves what is the relationship between the two elements and is the photo conveying that relationship? How are they related? I can tell this is a tennis ball, but this is not a tennis situation. What is the kid doing with the ball? How is the ball related to the kid? If we don't see this relationship, it just puzzles you, right? You're like, okay, there's a ball and it's a kid, but I don't see what's going on here.
[ Tyler ]
Yeah. But how are they interacting? Is it in there just for novelty's sake? It feels like it.
[ Huy ]
It would make more sense if we see like an arm or a hand reaching for the ball. Maybe he's throwing the ball against the trampoline wall or maybe he's trying to catch the ball. Maybe someone is throwing a ball to him or there are a bunch of balls.
[ Tyler ]
I was just literally going to say more balls. Right.
[ Huy ]
But there would be something happening - something that is as a relationship between the kid and the ball. I think that would help.
[ Tyler ]
Yeah. You have to think about elements in the frame that are taking up so much real estate.
[ Huy ]
But visually, this is good light. Even though it's a good moment I wish the kid had more hands reaching out a little bit better. The composition is super - nice dark background. That's not distracting at all. It's very dark.
[ Tyler ]
If you just looked at it as a graphic arrangement of a photo, it works. The ball has that little bit of a separation on the bottom. The photo has some nice shapes. The green kind of plays with the green leaves. Everything - the blue shorts with the blue sky - it all starts to work together. This is a good thing of course. But if we're talking about storytelling and really understanding the picture, that's where you start to fall off a little bit.
[ Huy ]
If I can draw this photo a little bit differently, I'd probably want to draw the ball a little bit higher to have more separation from the bottom. I would draw the kid's arm coming into frame with five fully extended fingers in the light grabbing for the ball. That would connect the two elements. Right. Maybe that's not what the photographer wants to say but that would be a more dynamic picture that we would be wanting the photo gods to give us. So maybe next time we'll get it.
[ Tyler ]
It's an interesting capture though. There's no doubt about it. When you're shooting family sessions and you're really bored and something like this funky happens, you go for it. There's nothing wrong with that.
[ Huy ]
It has a lot of things going for it. It could be a lot worse. I mean, it could not have a lot of these elements that we appreciate about it. So, yes - that was a good photo.
