Welcome to the new photo critique community (magazine?)!! I am super excited to be a part of this new community here on Lemmy.

A little background on me: I've been a hobby photographer for about a decade now and a professional real estate photographer and videographer for a couple of years. I am by no means an expert in any of this, but I do know the basics for sure! However, I really do think critiquing photos can be done by anyone from any background at any skill level!

My goal with this community is to just recreate the photo critique community that I very much loved on Reddit. As such I think we should stick to the same rules that we used over there. Especially the rule regarding critiquing your own work first in >500 words. I believe this rule is key to helping photographers grow in their craft. You can't just expect people to help you without putting in a little effort helping yourself as well!

I'll start by posting a few examples!

I took this leopard in the Serengeti, in the middle of the day — the light wasn't great. I'm a beginner and I'd love some pointers, especially on editing: what retouches would you make, and how could I have shot it better in the first place?

I'm writing up the whole build-your-own-safari trip here → https://diysafari.club/leopard/

Thanks!

Hey, I'm looking for critique on editing and composition. What would you have done differently?

I got lucky and was able to photograph a bee while she was cleaning herself AND it turned out good too! To be honest, I didn't really notice what I captured until I reviewed the photo. I am pretty happy with it. But I am curious on how I could improve future macro shots... Well, if I get lucky and have the opportunity to photograph such a rare occurrence again.

I've been practicing more portrait photography lately and wanted to check in and see what I could be doing better. Looking forward to your replies!

I am very happy with this shot. The lighting is very cool, I used a rather high ISO at 1600, but there is very little noise. It almost looks rendered in a 3D engine.

Any ideas of possible improvements?

Here's an alternative perspective (and shameless self promotion link): https://lemmy.ml/post/5981879

I wanted the road to not be as dark, but turning exposure up made the trails almost disappear in the fading contrast.

I feel like the shot is a little to dark on the right side and a little to bright on the left side.

I'm not sure if I would be able to fix this in post in a good way without making it seem unnatural.

Other than that maybe I applied a bit to much sharpening.

The exposure was for 1.6s with my hands resting on the railing of the bridge I was standing on. So the sharpening helped disguise any blur from shooting handheld.

I can't really find anything I could have done to make this photo better.

I'm not saying it is perfect. Just that I, as a complete amateur, can't come up with any improvement.

I would like for the background to be darker, but shorter exposure would affect the boat as well which is not really okay.

Any critique welcome!

Looking back, I wish I had taken some steps to the left so that I wouldn't have gotten the shady side of the house and also making the corner of the house straight relative to the framing. Right now I have rotated the framing in order to level the text properly.

Any other advice is welcome!

This is the first photo I've taken where I preferred the monochrome filter over having the colours present.

The sun being behind the building to the right (out of frame) makes the building seem darker and creates some glare that bleeds over the middle part of the photo. I've been thinking about whether or not this is a good thing, and I think I like it that way.

Any critique is welcome!

My only complaints are regarding the background. There is a yacht peeking out behind the subject boat and the ferry in the background is not very pretty.

I wanted to be close to the edge so that I would include the water line of the boat in the photo. Otherwise I could have moved further to the left in order to hide the yacht thingy.

I wish my lens would be able to open up wider (if I've understood aperture correctly..?) to create a blurrier background. Lowest I can do with my kit lens is 3.5f and that is if I don't use any zoom at all.

Any other advice?

I have just started learning photography and took this yesterday. I am very happy with it.

My own critique would be that I don't like the small light dashes that are over the middle of the "beams" and the "star effect" where the beams start out.

I don't know where they come from. The star effect might come from the car going over a speed bump in the beginning, therefore being slower and emitting more light in one place, but I'm not really sure.

Any critique is welcome! Come with suggestions what to do different or other stuff to try! I appreciate it :)

A doorway opens

in the charred remains of home

through which new worlds wait

Canon EOS 5d mark ii Ef l100mm f/2.8L macro ISO 400 f/13 1/100

Taken with Nikon D90 and Tamron SP AF 28-75 f2.8 1/60s @ f11

I took this photo of my dog on a beach. It’s always been a favorites, but I feel like it’s audience might be limited because it isn’t a cute photo of a dog. I’d love to hear feedback. Just for kicks, here’s an alternative version of the crop. It tells a really different story:

Hey all, found this one digging through some old photos and liked it a lot more than when I initially took it, I think it really does a good job of conveying the frantic energy of the metro. Not sure what direction I want to take it in the edit though, so I thought I'd ask for some advice!

So I've been sitting on this one for a long time - it too comes from the January photos. I was inspired by another photographer who was posting abstract architectural photos on the reddit community and I wanted to try my hand at the style. I really like architectural photography, but it gets boring sometimes because it seems there's only a handful of good angles you can get of a particular building. So this kind of reinvigorated my creativity.

To give some perspective, the roof line of the building is on the left. I've rotated the photo around and to me it looks like a closeup shot of a much taller building with the clouds behind. I really like that. The junction box sitting there is a little distracting to me but it isn't so bad & I'd rather not edit things out of the photo. Not only is it usually obvious to me where my own edit took place but it also goes along with my hang up about being disingenuous in my photography.

I enjoy a lot of the texture here which was my main intrigue when snapping the photo. The wispy, smoke-like clouds remind me of the steam you see coming up from the streets sometimes. The weird metal facade over the concrete is just plain awesome to me - it looks soft and rigid at the same time. The concrete of the building has a nice smooth texture as well.

I'm not sure what to think of the lighting. I think the gray sky behind the white clouds is a little too dark. The building itself looks pretty cool to me and I really like how dark the windows turned out. And the whole photo might adhere too much to the rule of thirds, it kind of gives me that too-clean feeling.

Overall I think I did a pretty good job for a first go at this style!

I have no monies for any extra gear or lens adapters, but I have this 40 yr old macro lens (doesn’t mount to any of my film camera bodies) I had been using to magnify images onto the iphone 14 telephoto lens sensor and I finally purchased an actual digital camera (and apparently hands down the worst DSLR camera body Canon has ever dared to manufacture - the t100) which was cheap enough for me to melt a hole into the body cap until I could glue it as a mount to the macro lens so I could get a little more life out of this thing. Now, all things considered, how apparent is the Frankenstein lens and aps-c sensor configuration on a camera that is known to lack the same features that used models that have the exact same image sensor have??? Based on this image of course. I think she did pretty damn good