arphot wrote:
Well, if my comment is technical, forgive me. Perhaps these photos for a contest require the composition that you've given them. But they all seem rather centered except for the butterfly. And the sunset image, although the colors are beautiful, I would have cropped about 1/3 of the sky out leaving the subject with more interest. The sky above where I cropped lacked interest IMO.
*smiles*
Believe it or not, arphot, I have another photo where I did exactly as you did with it... a more panoramic view eliminating the vertical colors.
For me, personally... that cropped out exactly what held my interest in the photo in the first place, and I suspected it would have similar results with the viewers and judges at the contest.
It was coincidence that these are more centered, not a requirement of the contest. In hindsight, perhaps this could be one of the reasons why none of them placed, too!
That particular section of photography was saturated with amazing photos of sunsets/sunrises as it was. I didn't stand a CHANCE lol.
Everyone assumed it was a sunset or sunrise because the title was written on the back of the photo! *snickers*
(BTW- This wasn't a sunset, although it looked like it. It was what the sky looked like JUST before a terrible, summer storm... around 5pm. Typically, storms move west to east where I was living then. This photo was taken of the eastern sky just before that storm got here. I probably should have turned around and captured the darkened clouds, too!)
I am not a fan of centering things, and I often screw around with the rule of thirds as well... but the ones shown as centered in this selection, were zoomed in-on for the detail, which, imo, represented "Nature's Art" in the first place (or else, as in the case of the seagull, were far away and not planning to come any closer and sit still for me to get the details in the feathers. There was little , if anything, around the subjects of interest enough to keep.).
I really liked the juxtaposition between the fragility and softness of the butterfly's wings against the hard, textured asphalt though and the colors worked very well together, so I deliberately left it off-center for that reason.
Thank you very much, for your critique and for tweaking the photo more to your preferences. That's why I'm so smitten with photography... it's crazy-subjective!
Imo, there is no "right or wrong" in photography... it's only what works for the artist (artist FIRST, then the beholder, imo), or what doesn't work.
I sincerely appreciate your comments :)
T~