Reply To: Want honest opinions

[cameraclicker]

The praying mantis on a rusty pipe is over exposed a little with too much brightness behind it.  On the other hand, congratulations for finding one.  If you are going to shoot nature where you find it, you have less options than if you capture it and place it in a studio setting…  Perhaps spot metering?  If you like praying mantis photos, and other bugs, there are a lot here.

The fish in ice must be pretty fresh.  The eye is still clear.  I like the photo.

BW Shisha feels tilted, and too dark.  I would remove the power lines.

Boat is tilted and has noise (surprised at the noise in the cloud since ISO 100).  Fix the tilt, fix the noise, add a little fill light to the foreground, crop about 600 px (most of the empty sky, keeping the clouds with just a little breathing room above) and it is very nice.

Beach 2 looks level.  The horizon is in the middle.  Try cropping it so the horizon is on the upper third line.  The lump of old concrete in the lower right is not in sharp focus, so try cropping to remove it (make the lower edge at the very top of the rock in the lower left, keeping the rock above it) which puts the lower third line just above the lower third line.  Three different “looks”.  Which do you like best?  Why?

“God got me” girl has lots of noise in the background, her hands and arms are perhaps too bright.  That’s all nit picking stuff.

The girl in the loud dress looks better taken from the side than square on.  Her skin could stand some post production work, just cleaning up little blemishes, which is picky work to do well.  Good retouching is an art, bad retouching gets you on the front page here.  You don’t have anything to be ashamed of regarding any of them.  They could be improved a little.  68e has a light background with almost white sky.  Depending upon how reflective that wood is, you may have a good result if you exposed for the background and lit the foreground with a flash at part power.  It depends on why you took the picture.  If it was a vacation photo, probably I would not bother getting out a flash.  If it was a photo shoot, I would.  If a flash is used, the angle of camera to wood may have to change or a circular polarizer may be needed to handle reflection.