Critique These Photos Please.

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Too much pinky

I agree that there is a lot of pink in these and no bright whites anywhere. Check the settings on your camera to see if your meter is reading the proper atmosphere.

Thanks Nancy, I'm shooting these with my samsung galaxy iphone 4 camera, I did some post editing, seems like my photos are coming out dull with little color, I shot them in HD mode. I did the editing with a windows live photo editor. I adjusted the following exposure, contrast, shadows, color temp, tint ( which is where I'm getting the pink from I think) and saturation. Seems only adding lots of saturation is giving me more color.

I'm in the process of trying to learn photo shop but not there yet.

Mario,

I think ALL of these would be better as B&W images. The cyan/blue-ish tint is a very hard color to decorate with and puts most people off. Add some contrast or even a "sepia" tone and then repost them and let's look,

Rich

I'll give it a go Rich, it's gonna take a while. Thanks for the suggestion.

I like the black and whites better...

I like the sepia one you just posted!

Mario, unless I'm mistaken, all these have the same name, so how can we differentiate?

Good question, I'm on it.lol

Patricia, I have to reorganize them and for the sake of this critique it just might be easier if you copy and paste the image you want to address for me, otherwise I have to go back and edit 17 images.

Ok Patricia, now they have numbers, you can also go to my profile page and view the other ones in this series and critique any of those also, I didn't want to post them all here.

I like the following images in sepia. If it were me, I'd scrap the rest. It's hard to tell if they'd print large, however, since you don't have the full resolution box enabled. Oops, I just realized the middle one is not in sepia. I'd fix that one and offer all three. I didn't care for the composition of the other pieces.

Thank you Patricia. I do like your choices.

I agree with Pat's choices in sepia, well done, Mario (doesn't look like an i-phone)!

The black and white are it!!!!!

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The sepia one does it for me, nice image

Regards
John

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Um, just to be technical there is no Samsung Iphone.....

Anyway, the images are not bad composition wise. The color issues could likely be fixed shooting on an overcast day which will decrease the dynamic range needed and not challenge the sensor to capture what it has a hard time doing. (Not sure how well that particular phone will do on a less than bright day though. Some handle it better than others.)

BW/sepia is another way to deal with it. Keep in mind to do a good black and white or sepia it usually requires more than just taking away the color. The contrast will usually need to be increased as well. Of the images Patricia picked the first looks pretty good contrast wise but the second looks flat ad the third somewhere in between.

I just did what I do on all my BWs, took just a minute but I think it adds depth. (I will of course remove my copy after the example is seen.)

Thanks everyone!, your tips and suggestions have been very helpful, Rich, you were right on when suggesting the B&W, I do love B&W images and when taking photos of historical locations I will keep it in mind.

@JC, thanks for the example,Oh, it's a Galaxy 4 iphone,

I think on the color shots I over manipulated the the tint and saturation settings.

The most notable thing that I learned from this critique I think is this, that even though I'm not at all experienced with photography my own personal taste on what I like and what those of you who are very experienced is not that far off, for me it's encouraging.Second is, that B&W photography never goes out of style and it's something I would consider exploring further.

And last but not least, this has shown me that even though the subject might be very interesting, it's the composition that is most important, this is evident from the fact that very few chose any of the photos of the large gears.

Mario,

What JC said. Samsung does not make iPhones, Apple does. Samsung makes galaxy phones.

BW that JC made looks nice, the others I do not care much for. What others said, there is too much pink and purple in the color pictures.

Mario,

Much better! When making adjustments, I always tell people that you need to go "way" past where you think you should go and then come back in. Many times, especially here, the contrast could be pushed as I mentioned above. Depending on what editing software you are using, they generally all have sliders, that go both over and under the adjustment. These are still a bit "flat", so take #3,5 and push the contrast past where you think it should be (where JC did his adjustment) and then come back and somewhere in there, you'll see the improvement.

On images that are B&W and have an actual "white" and a real "black", you generally don't want to go to far. Your editing software may have a "eyedropper" thingie and you can hold it over the black and white areas and make sure for white, to stay below 255, I usually keep mine under 250 and for blacks, "0" is the blackest, so maybe "5" or so. Anything past these numbers and the printer won't see any detail, if there is detail there.

Keep shooting and don't worry WHAT you call your phone!

Rich

I think the larges gears were not as popular as the other images because they appear to be in the shade and there isn't a lot of contrast with the background. You are talented Mario and encourage you to pursue your gift!

A agree with Rich on the contrast on that pick, a little less than what JC is showing, it looks a little harsh to me but that is my taste. Sometimes it is hard to tell exactly how much when using a back lit computer screen. Sometimes I have to edit more than one and choose when I get my perspective several days later. I have images in my gallery that I thought were optimally edited only to find I need to do it again!

JC and Sebastian, I see now what JC meant about the iphone term I used , Lol just goes to show I'm not all that up to speed on gadgetry, but I have been using computers as far back as I can remember ,playing tennis was one of the few games you could play on them at one time.

Thank you Rich for the specifics, I'll try to incorporate those ranges.

Suzanne,thanks for your kind compliment and info.

All the comments I found to be very helpful, including learning to call my phone buy it's proper name. Lol Thank you all! I'm sure I will need your help in the near future as I am really enjoying taking my photos and am looking forward to improving on this.