First student critique: Cody Hess.
I think Cody had some really interesting pictures. I thought his best picture was “Helmets” because the row of kids created natural lines in the picture, and despite no one really moving in the picture, I got a feeling of collisions and hard work were a matter of seconds away, and the kids know that and are anxious, and that can be a tough thing to do with a picture. If there is one thing I don’t like about this picture it would be the busy background, but that can be hard to not have at a sporting event. I thought Cody really captured the mood of the scene really well. With most of the pictures, I got a different feeling inside about what the subjects were feeling at the time. Some pictures sent chills down my spine, now maybe that is because the room I’m sitting in is freezing right now, but I do think that the pictures played a role.
What I think Cody needs to improve on is where he places the subject in his pictures. Most of them are just right in the middle and after a second or two of looking at them, I have no interest anymore. I think it would be better if he followed the rule of thirds more. In all of his pictures that he chose to be graded, there are a ton of distractions that lead the eye away from the subject. In fact, with most of the pictures, I spent more time looking at the distractions and the backgrounds than I did the subjects themselves. One thing I would do to try and help fix this is have a shallower depth of field, so the subject is in focus, but the background is not.
Overall, I think Cody did a good job capturing the mood of the people in the pictures, but he needs to improve on keeping the viewers attention on the subject.
Second student critique: Zach Greubel
What I think Zach did well capture the motion of the football games. He had some interesting positions that some of the players were in, and those can be tough to get. I also like the formation of the Western Thunder Marching Band. That created some nice lines in the pictures, and I thought the lighting for the picture was very good as well. It worked out nicely having the band in the sun, and the crowd in the shade. It was a lot less distracting that way.
There also was quite a bit that I didn’t like about these pictures. First off, for his non sports picture of the kid studying, it feels posed. I find it hard to believe that you could just sit down that close to him, take a picture, without him looking up at all. And having said that, another problem is that you can’t see his face. I would say the most important part of a feature/portrait picture of someone studying would be their face about 95% of the time, especially when you are so close to them. I would really work on trying to get their face for future pictures. The other big problem I have with his pictures is the lack of subjects, and the distractions. In most of the football pictures, there are so many players and so much going on, I don’t know where to look, and can’t find the ball because the picture is so busy. I would try zooming in more, and focusing more on one player than the whole team. And along those lines, most of the backgrounds are really distracting, whether it is the crowd at the football game, or random people by Pistol Pete at the volleyball game, or all of the things on the tables in the picture at the library, there is just too much going on in most of the pictures. I would trying a smaller depth of field to get the background out of focus, or just finding different angles where not as much is going on.
Overall I think Zach did a decent job photographing the motion of the football games, but needs to work on having less distractions in the pictures.