Image Description
I visited a small pond last Autumn to explore the area. There were young aspen trees near one section of the pond. Near those aspens, I found these leaves floating near some reeds. I was fortunate on my timing as it appeared the leaves had recently fallen.
Type of Critique Requested
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Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
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Conceptual: Feedback on the message and story conveyed by the image.
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Emotional: Feedback on the emotional impact and artistic value of the image.
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Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
The patterns of the leaves made me think of lily pads. I’d be curious to hear about the overall composition, the balance of elements, and color in the image. Does the image engage you?
6 Likes
Composition: You have made a good selection lof what to include and how. The circular leaves and the vertical reeds and their reflections make up a good composition. The more horizontal straws add some chaos and complexity to the image in a positive way.
Balance: The leaves are pretty well balanced by the reeds and the horizontal straws.
Colors: I like the colors with the more expressive orange leaves contrastibng with the more tuned down blue and green colors of the water and the reeds.
2 Likes
This is so interesting because of the contrast of the round yellow leaves with the cool blue verticals of the reeds. And there’s those horizontal lighter reed branches cutting across the verticals. This is super!
I was thinking I’d seen it before and then I remembered that you posted it on the page for your interview with Matt Payne. I really enjoyed that.
The only thing you might consider is that leaf near the LLC bottom that is almost touching the frame. If it either had more room or was actually intersecting the frame it wouldn’t bug me. But that’s just me.
1 Like
Thank you for the feedback Ola!
Thanks so much Bonnie! Happy you enjoyed the conversation with Matt. Yes that leave cluster in the LLC bothered me a bit too. I may crop out it out but need to see what Tim thinks if I were to submit this to NLPA later this year.
@Alfredo_Mora it’s really only that one leaf for me, and now on a second look, it’s not bothering me that much. I don’t know how you’d crop this and not lose too much of the other leaves! If it’s crop vs. leave in, I’d vote for leave in.
1 Like
Hi Alfredo - I’m slowly getting through the critiques , there are more than I expected - which is quite nice in many ways, it just means I’m a little slower.
I’ll address the balance and color separately.
In terms of balance and composition, my first instinct was to read it as left side heavy. I think that’s because so many of the leaves are on the left side and the dead reeds point in this direction too. The left had reed in the water is a bit of an outlier too so my thought would be to see what happens if it’s excluded.
To my eye, the images seems to balance a little better now. I’m then looking around the frame for ‘distractions’ - note I don’t mean ‘messy’ stuff by this as nature is inherently messy so I’m not interested in over refining things for the sake of them. The small bright spot right in the middle of the frame is drawing my eye loads so I’d look at reducing the contrast of that and while I’m at it, I’ll try to reduce the contrast of that leaf on the bottom left edge and a couple of ‘needles’ here and there
And finally, I’ve just added a little grad to the top of the frame to push attention down a bit…
Color wise, the image looks fine to me… You could increase the saturation of the yellows a little but I don’t see any need to.
The image works really well - I particularly like the bent and curving reeds adding dashes of stress to the composition.
In terms of the a competition - the concept is a theme we see a lot of and many judges might prefer seeing something either more ‘perfect’ (a bias I don’t particularly like) or something with a few more original elements (I can see the reason for this if you’re comparing two images with similar qualities and one is bringing new, attractive or intriguing elements to the game).
Nice work 
and thanks for submitting!
2 Likes
Thanks so much Tim for taking the time to provide such a thoughtful response to my image. All of your feedback is super helpful. Thank you!
The color contrast makes it an artistic image and tranquil. Well done.
