Reply To: Developing a personal style – Color vs Realism?

[cameraclicker]

Harry, Nat Geo’s pages say: “We encourage an active community discussion that adheres to our community guidelines.”  And, the guidelines say you can’t be offensive.  Reading through the posts here, you have probably seen people take offence when someone posts a negative comment.

You posted 21 photos of which I find 20 are just boring.  I like the Golden Gate Bridge photo because of the 700 odd pages of photos of the bridge on 500px, yours has a different perspective and the sky’s colour helps, too.  The turtles photo just misses because the light is falling on the back of the shell instead of on the heads.  Power and Grace has a similar problem.  The bright white spray tends to hide the much darker surfer.  I must have looked at it half a dozen times before I noticed the surfer.  If I wasn’t trying to evaluate your photos, I would have looked at the thumbnails and clicked onto the next site.  All your photos seem to be in focus, with good exposure.  They are saturated and would be right at home on 500px in that respect.  Colours look OK.

They are all record shots.  I came.  I saw.  I clicked the shutter.  I have tens of thousands of them.  They are all over my galleries of trips we have taken.  They fill out the record of the trip by showing the overall conditions, scenery, whatever.  By themselves they could be printed and hung on the walls in some corporate office downtown.  But, they’re not portfolio shots.   They don’t grab the viewer and hold attention.