# Critique My Photography Composition!



## Fishly (Jan 8, 2010)

I really need some help with my composition. A few of my pictures look awesome while most just look decent, and I can't figure out what I'm doing right or wrong to make them so. I know about the rule of thirds, but I'm having trouble applying it properly, especially when there's a lot going on in the picture. I learn best when others point out to me what I'm doing wrong, so please tell me what you think of these pictures.

There are about 20 pics, but I don't expect you to comment on each one. If you could just tell me what mistakes you see repeated and which pics stand out to you as being especially good or bad and why, that would be just fine. 

*Full shots:*
Snails in a cup:









Snail crawling towards an empty shell:









Droplets under filter lid:









Snail mirror:









Snail on the glass:









Pic of cholla wood- how do you shoot something like this that has so much going on?









I was trying to do one of those foreground/background pics, but I don't think it came out right.









Corner of my 25g. I'm still trying to figure out when symmetry is okay and when it's not.









Another symmetrical one: 









For some reason, this pic looks good to me. But why? It's just an empty tank.









Lotus bulb grow-out:










These pics have been cropped, so I want to know how well I cropped them, in terms of composition:

CO2 line:









Snails going for a ride:









Tank of mirrors:









Tank of mirrors 2:









Snail on a rock:









Fake plant shot:









Shrimplets- a cull and a PFR


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## williamsonaaron (Jan 27, 2010)

Fishly said:


> I really need some help with my composition. A few of my pictures look awesome while most just look decent, and I can't figure out what I'm doing right or wrong to make them so. I know about the rule of thirds, but I'm having trouble applying it properly, especially when there's a lot going on in the picture. I learn best when others point out to me what I'm doing wrong, so please tell me what you think of these pictures.
> 
> There are about 20 pics, but I don't expect you to comment on each one. If you could just tell me what mistakes you see repeated and which pics stand out to you as being especially good or bad and why, that would be just fine.


well thats a lot to critique in one go.. So I'll just do the first two then somebody else could do the others. overall recommendation is to lose the clock in the lower right corner.. that info should be in the mete-data for the photo anyway if you are concerned about remembering when you took a pic.

Snails in a cup:








1st picture this is I think actually your best shot of the whole bunch. 
why? It has a clear focal point, the cup naturally leads your eye to the snails in the tank. Your primary focal point is in sharp focus and the subject is interesting. There is a detractor in the image though that you should be aware because it is common in a lot of your photos. My eyes are slightly drawn to a) the pen in the lower left and b) the blown out white area of bottom right color. This photo gets A+ if you had the entire back ground filled with the black sand.. as in the top left and right hand corners. 


Snail crawling towards an empty shell:









hmm I have a hard time with this one.. but here we go.. 
The good - The snail is in focus, 
The needs work - The snail is not in SHARP focus. Photo is taken from on top and to the right. I don't think that was the best choice, because I'm not getting a really interesting perspective of the scene, also again because of the choice of angle you are not making full use of the frame and have the whole bottom left is a distraction from the scene. So composition wise I would have moved down to get on the same level as the snails and went in closer with the zoom to fill the frame with the scene which would also give you the option of moving the snails off center which would also make for a more interesting composition. Also the amount of empty tiny snail shells is a detractor to my eye as well.. maybe more of a tank critique than photo...

Here is an introduction to the rule of thirds one of the most important compositional tools we have.


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## Nubster (Aug 9, 2011)

For me, lack of focus kills most of these shots. Shooting tanks can be hard. I would work on the basics like lighting and getting the focus down. Then start messing with composition. You could stumble on the best composition ever but if you blow the shot because of being OOF or bad lighting, well, the shot it toast. But whatever you do, keep shooting. Some just get it, some people, like me, really have to try hard to get good shots.


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## Da Plant Man (Apr 7, 2010)

WRONG THREAD. Ooops. Looked so similar.


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## Chlorophile (Aug 2, 2011)

In college we had to do film photography for 3 semesters. Two black and white and one color class. 
Basically first and Foremost for film was correct exposure settings, then focus, then composition. I'd argue that in your average digital photo setting composition is the most important assuming your not way over or under exposed. 
It's different with animals though, they don't pose for you so you really just need practice reading the in-camera light meter really fast, or setting it to a good setting before looking for shots.

In an aquarium you can typically get away with one shutter and aperture setting for all your shots if you aren't targeting some shadowy areas. 
So then your getting back to composition and focus. 
My lenses on my digital camera actually have awful manual focus, it's only a short turn through all the range of focus and the focus has no resistance so I don't find it easy at all to manual focus on the fly like I could with my film cameras that have really stiff slow focus.

Auto focus sucks on my camera too... Hah.

Which means I basically take a ton of photos to compensate. Ton ton ton.
Composition is the only thing I can quickly fix, a subtle zoom or little tweak to the camera position are really was to do fast, the rest isn't as easy for me. 
All my pictures have good composition most of the time but not all of them are in focus! 

Just practice that's all.


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## Chlorophile (Aug 2, 2011)

Also, someone said they liked that white thing in the corner of the snail picture.. No! That's a really bad thing to have. You want your corners and edges darker than the center to keep your eyes focused in the photo. 
Some would disagree but it was taught to me as one of the most important things in composition.


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## Chlorophile (Aug 2, 2011)

The droplets is a very nice photo but gives a sculpture feeling not a photography feeling. It's not something you have to try to create you just find it and exploit the natural appeal.


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## thefisherman (Oct 15, 2011)

this is kinda off topic but... aren't those dwarf lilies? i see many refering to them as tiger lotus , i may be wrong 




- thefisherman


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## williamsonaaron (Jan 27, 2010)

Chlorophile said:


> Also, someone said they liked that white thing in the corner of the snail picture.. No! That's a really bad thing to have. You want your corners and edges darker than the center to keep your eyes focused in the photo.
> Some would disagree but it was taught to me as one of the most important things in composition.




You should read more carefully. I listed the white thing in the corner as a distraction... I read all other posts no one listed it as a positive.


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## shinycard255 (Sep 15, 2011)

Chlorophile said:


> Also, someone said they liked that white thing in the corner of the snail picture.. No! That's a really bad thing to have. You want your corners and edges darker than the center to keep your eyes focused in the photo.
> Some would disagree but it was taught to me as one of the most important things in composition.


Time/Date stamp must go, but also what you are describing is called Vignetting. Not every shot needs a vignette to hold your attention at the focal point. If you know what you are doing, you don't need to add vignetting in post production to make your photo better. It may ADD to the photo, but doesn't need to be there every single time


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## Chlorophile (Aug 2, 2011)

williamsonaaron said:


> You should read more carefully. I listed the white thing in the corner as a distraction... I read all other posts no one listed it as a positive.


Oh whoops, well either way point still stands - it's bad!



shinycard255 said:


> Time/Date stamp must go, but also what you are describing is called Vignetting. Not every shot needs a vignette to hold your attention at the focal point. If you know what you are doing, you don't need to add vignetting in post production to make your photo better. It may ADD to the photo, but doesn't need to be there every single time


Vignetting is nice, but I'm mostly talking about just not having white borders, it's something you can avoid while taking the photo or with cropping. 
Doesn't mean you have to burn the edges of the photo.

Also I think vignetting is more something you get with large format film cameras, and it's quite drastic and symmetrical, and is a bi-product of the mechanics of the lens/film combo.

In color photography though it's much less important, you can have bright edges, but a completely washed out white edge is pretty much always bad unless for some odd reason that IS your focal point.

Here is a picture I took in Rome, black and white, with a washed out white corner, but it's the focal point in this photo so I think it is excusable.


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## Fishly (Jan 8, 2010)

*To whichever mod that moved this to the photography subforum: Thank you. I didn't even realize there was a photography subforum.


I know the time stamp on the pictures is a distraction, but that was only from my sister's camera. I now have my own camera and I turned off its time stamp, as you can see in the last of the uncropped pics.

I'm currently working on getting a better camera because the one that I have doesn't work very well for me. Any ISO over 200 is extremely grainy, and I have only two choices for aperture, so the only way I can get a good exposure is if I lower the shutter speed, which tends to make the pictures a little blurry/OOF. I feel like I have gone as far as I can with the camera I have in terms of hardware-based quality, so the main thing I want to work on is composition and developing an eye for photographic opportunities.

Here are two more versions of the snails in a cup pic. The black thing is the heater.


















The picture of the snail crawling towards the empty shell was taken over six months ago, so I don't remember much about the shot. I think by using the weird angle, I was trying to get both snails in the shot without much showing in the background. If I had taken it straight on through the front glass, there would have been rocks, fake plants, etc. in the background.

This is probably the best shot I ever took with my camera (sadly, this was before I turned off the time stamp):










Chlorophile, what do you mean by "sculpture" feeling vs "photography" feeling?


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## Chlorophile (Aug 2, 2011)

Fishly said:


> *To whichever mod that moved this to the photography subforum: Thank you. I didn't even realize there was a photography subforum.
> 
> 
> I know the time stamp on the pictures is a distraction, but that was only from my sister's camera. I now have my own camera and I turned off its time stamp, as you can see in the last of the uncropped pics.
> ...


Sorry, poor wording on my part.. 
I guess just abstract is the word. 
It's a nice photo but it's not really photography, I guess, I can't figure out how to word it properly. 
I guess the reason I said sculpture feeling is because in my photography classes a lot of people would take pictures of sculptures and weird geometric shapes and the pictures looked cool, but they weren't demonstrating any of the photographers style really. 
Stuff like this -

















It's sort of like the kind of photography people do to sell to stock-image companies.


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## Nubster (Aug 9, 2011)

Yeah, more artsy I think, abstract. Certainly cool and has it's place but not really my cup of tea.


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## Fishly (Jan 8, 2010)

I thought part of the point of photography was to make a work of art. Like painting, except that instead of creating the art yourself, you are searching for it around you, trying to "capture" it.


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## Chlorophile (Aug 2, 2011)

Fishly said:


> I thought part of the point of photography was to make a work of art. Like painting, except that instead of creating the art yourself, you are searching for it around you, trying to "capture" it.


It is, and there is nothing wrong with photographing things like that but it doesn't say anything about the photographer...
To give a really really bad example.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=argCvDpk_KQ
Everyone can photograph water droplets, they are cool, but it's not something worth being complimented on. Some people will definitely do a better job at it than others. The important thing is the fact that you noticed the water droplets at all and decided to photograph them. Observe whats around you, find things with beauty, and take a picture.


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## Fishly (Jan 8, 2010)

I didn't realize that photos were supposed to speak about the photographer.  

What do my photos say about me (other than "needs a better camera")?


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## Chlorophile (Aug 2, 2011)

Fishly said:


> I didn't realize that photos were supposed to speak about the photographer.
> 
> What do my photos say about me (other than "needs a better camera")?


They say that you have a fish tank :hihi:

When it comes to art photography though, you'll take pictures of the big picture, of you'll take pictures of the details, landscapes/buildings, macro. 
Only you know what your style will become, you have to develop it.


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## Fishly (Jan 8, 2010)

What other kinds of photography are there other than art photography? I know about portaits, but are there any other "genres"?


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## Chlorophile (Aug 2, 2011)

Fishly said:


> What other kinds of photography are there other than art photography? I know about portaits, but are there any other "genres"?


Abstract, landscape, uh.. I'm not sure really.


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## Nubster (Aug 9, 2011)

Landscape, portrait/weddings/people, street, wildlife, macro, sports, travel, photojournalism, black and white, cars/vehicles, night, art/abstract, commercial, ect.


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## Fishly (Jan 8, 2010)

Back to the OT... Any other critiques?


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## Fishly (Jan 8, 2010)

Bump!


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