Critique welcome

A couple of images from a newbie pet photog. Feedback would be appreicated; don't hold back.



[imagehttp://kenglade.smugmug.com/photos/718166305_3yvFA-M.jpg[/image]

Hey Ken,

Welcome to the community. Your second image did not have a tag associated with it (you missed the second bracket in the first part of the tag). I am including it here:



James

Ken,
like both images; love the second. The second has a lot of subtle things going for it including the way the blue on the urn matches the blues in the tag. Very nice.

I'd have to see #1 bigger to make any critical comments.

Jim

Hi Ken and very welcome to this forum. It is brave to start out in the critique section but a great place to learn.
Hope you do not mind but I thought I could explain better with a visual. I think your images have great appeal. I adore the second so I hope you understand why I think it is a bit overworked. I would like to see the original file to see your choices in cropping and processing. I like your cropping and I do agree with Jim in wanting to see them larger.
Again welcome and I am looking forward to seeing more work.

Hey Peggy,

I completely agree with yours and Jim's comments. Also, I might add in that once we see the files a bit larger that these may be fun to play with the original files. I also feel that they are both a bit over-worked but that they may both be very workable - particularly the 2nd shot.

James

Thought I'd chime in on these images.
First image: I do like the color hue/sat of this image, the composition, crop, and the overall style of the image. Reminds me of a calendar pose!

Right now, the only thing that bothers me is the bright spot above the dog's head. That spot just appears to be blank there which I don't think should be there. If its supposed to be sky, perhaps you could have metered off of the sky and changed your f/stop by 1 stop or so. It might have had the dog a bit more dark than it is now, but that can be corrected in photo editing software. As it stands now, I don't see how you could get anything out of that space.

For the second image, the pose and expression were caught beautifully! I really like the composition, and you followed the rule of thirds well. I love how the tint of blue on the rim of the container matches with the dog tag. The use of selective focus is super on this shot.

What I don't like about the image: The top of the dog's head is blown out. In addition, It looks like there is a blue tint to the dogs nose, its not black, it looks blue to me. Also, around the dogs eyes seem to have the same blue tint.

I think with good photo editing software, most of this could be corrected, but it would be something to watch in your camera settings before taking the pictures also.

Hope this helps..
Marie

Thanks, Marie, and you are absolutely right. The bright spots -- almost ubiquitous in my images -- are caused by the sun. I live in New Mexico and Sol is relentless. I have been thinking about adding an umbrella to my gear, not to shoot through but to provide some limited shade.

I've tried several times in both NX2 and PSE 6 to do something about those areas. However, either they're unfixable (totally blown out) or beyond my expetise.

Ken

I can't see any images to critique. Have they been removed?