The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Both the lighthouse and Great Blue Heron images were juried away from a photo club exhibition and I am trying to figure out why. Not sure which photo this description box applies to so I will cover both submitted photos. The lighthouse was built in the late 1800s but destroyed by an ice flow in 1977. It remains on the registry of historic places and remains an obstacle to navigation in the Chesapeake Bay. The Great Blue Heron was taken from a boat with a 100-500 lens and a 2x extender. The parent is carrying foot either in her beak or stomach and is ready to deliver to the chicks.
Specific Feedback
Just be aware the photo curator for a Richmond, Virginia, art gallery was hired to curate the Frederick, Maryland’s annual exhibit at a local community college, and she rejected both of these without explanation. So I guess they are bad.
Technical Details
Don’t have the details handy but I was using an exposure method I saw on YouTube of exposing up to the blinkies and than backing off 1/3 of a stop. Both are from a moving boat rocking on the water, so obviously shutter speeds had to be high as well as ISO.
Beautiful image, and congratulations on capturing such an intimate and sweet moment.
For the editing, I would recommend a slight vignette from the frame’s bottom mid to right side. I understand that the light is coming from the top right. This might help magnify the impact more with the gorgeous four you captured.
Alton, I like both of these images. The lighthouse has a great moody feeling to me. The stork photo is a unique and special catch of the stork returning to a full nest.
Pretty interesting that for the photo club exhibition an art gallery curator was doing the judging. Leaves me with some question marks…??? Is this a large club with lots of photos submitted? Since it is a single person selecting it is up to their particular skills , and preference, as to what they select. There has to be (hopefully) a reasonable method for selecting. And, were there any ground rules laid out?
If this person was using a contest criteria for selection (meaning they are looking for any reasons to downselect) the lighthouse photo could have been downselected for the top of the lighthouse being close to the top of the frame. We don’t know how they chose to do it.
Very good shots. Keep photographing. Keep learning.
The Frederick Camera Clique is a large club of 100 members and includes those from outside the area. There were no rules but there were categories and I think I qualified for the categories. People from around the nation who are not members are invited to enter. I think there were 300 pictures and 80 could be in the show. I will use Generative AI to widen the top border. Thanks for the tip.
In so many cases there is no common sense behind jurying. I think sometimes they throw an armload of prints in the air and choose the ones that land face up. If they need to cull further, they choose the ugliest ones remaining.
I suspect that rejection of the top one might have been for the “artistic filter” look of the reflection. It may have been a bit much for a strictly photographic exhibit. But with canvas added at the top, I think it’s a wonderful scene. The bottom one, you just have to wonder if it happened to land face down. I think it is lovely and you caught a rare moment very well, with wonderful sharpness and detail. I do like the idea of bringing down the LR corner a bit. The base feels crowded – if there was more image there that got cropped for the sake of an aspect ratio, I think it would be better included. But if not, I think it’s wonderful that you caught as much as you did – it’s not easy to follow action like that!
My mantra is to disregard all judges – even the ones that like something I did!!
It’s hard not to take things personally sometimes, but I wouldn’t worry that these are “bad” photos. Being an artist takes a lot of self-assurance, especially in the face of others’ judgment. That said, maybe looking at past exhibitions would give you an idea of what type of image is selected. Sometimes there’s an overall theme that some photos just don’t fit. Recently I submitted some work and while one went up for vote, none made the publication and I really just think my shots weren’t cutesy enough. That’s the target they want and I knew it and tried my best, but nothing fit what they wanted. There’s also an individual’s opinion and taste to account for and she doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for that.
Keep shooting, posting here and mostly enjoying the experience of taking pictures. Valuing your work yourself is most important.
Thanks, Diane. I did crop off boards of an old hunter’s blind at the bottom. The birds took over after the blind was abandoned out in the middle of the water. The reflection appears as it did with dodging and burning, so I could leave it more natural in a future edit and use generative AI to make a less crowded bottom…or reveal the ugly boards from the former hunter’s blind. Thanks for the tips. I did darken the lower right corner and bottom as suggested.
Thanks, Kristen. I noticed that of the 80 selected out of 300, at least eight looked similar in that they were graphic shapes, like the steps of stairs, or windows in a textureless wall above water that reflected one of the windows. That wasn’t one of the photos, but that’s the style of some of the accepted photos. She is a gallery curator, not a wildlife photographer, and was clearly going for photos that “looked” like art. If I could have trained the birds to hold up sticks in a repeating X pattern, I think she would have approved it. Oops, a little bitterness there. I take it back.
I agree. In order to understand why yours were rejected you need to look at the winners and compare yours to theirs. Photo contests are not about good vs bad. They’re about better vs worse.
In my opinion the heron image is better than the lighthouse. The lighthouse image seems ordinary, one that many have seen before.
Sounds right, Igor. It was a workshop by Jay FLeming who has a couple of photo books out on the Chesapeake Bay. The idea was to stand off and have the participants use their longest telephoto to capture a rising moon enlarged behind the lighthouse. Clouds prevented that and when it was up it was much darker and we switched back to 24-70 to try to salvage a shot. The lighthouse with the moon extending left and right as well as above the lighthouse might have been a little more interesting.
