Critique please

October 4th, 2013


Please be honest
October 4th, 2013
I think it's a cool shot, but I think I'd much rather like it in black and white. And I'd love the contrast upped a bit.....anything to make the tractor pop.
October 4th, 2013
Nice shot. Maybe the tone and colour are too uniform, I agree with @kenteroo about boosting the contrast and creating depth. What about reducing the intensity of the sepia processing a bit?
October 4th, 2013
It's a haunting image - well seen! But it needs more contrast, and black and white would suit it better to my taste. (I think of sepia as "Old West" era.) Is it someplace you can return to, and is the tractor still there? It's a scene that deserves to be worked, if that's possible (too often it isn't!). From this angle the tractor becomes an extension of the house, and you barely notice the car.
October 4th, 2013
@therubysusan @mara19500 @kenteroo thank you all for your advice, i'll do that next time
October 4th, 2013
Looks like it is caught up in a sand/dust storm. And did you take this from behind glass? There are some odd reflections going on the right hand side... or is that my eyes?
October 4th, 2013
@bobfoto I see it too. And why are you such a gorgeous man?! Random questions pondered by me. You're welcome. I also had a burrito for lunch. Need more randomness? Didn't think so.
October 5th, 2013
@kenteroo - I think I shall always think of burritos when I see a tractor, an old house and a sand storm.

and @cwebb - I would perhaps have cropped it a little... I'm a sucker for the widescreen look, the 16:9 kinda thing. Just a little croption across the top.
October 5th, 2013
@bobfoto you should always, somewhere in your head, be thinking of burritos.
October 5th, 2013
@therubysusan good eye! I didn't even see the car! It's a cool addition.
October 5th, 2013
@kenteroo - burrito.
October 5th, 2013
It occurs to me, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. If the tractor's a different color from the house, you might try desaturating the color image or even importing it into an app to give it a faded old photo look. You'd get most of the nostalgic, melancholy feel of sepia or B&W but you'd have a little color to separate the tractor from the house.

I'm assuming you took it in color and converted it to sepia.
October 5th, 2013
Interesting concept, Cupcake. My first thought was to look for a pair of ruby slippers sticking out from under the house! It has a bit of a Wizard of Oz feel to it. I definitely suggest increasing the contrast a bit. I'm not sure what you use for photo editing, but if it's Elements then you could add a levels adjustment and slide the midtones to the right just a bit. There's also something that looks a bit like a ladder just peeking in from the left. Since it's right on the edge of the frame, I'd either edit that out or crop it out.

Making the tractor pop, as you suggested, would take a bit of editing. One thing I might try is to mask out the tractor and the foreground grass and lower the saturation on the rest of the image. Then select the tractor and foreground grass and increase the contrast. You need to include the foreground grass, though, otherwise it will look like the tractor was just pasted there. Make sense?

Another technique to try - again if you're using elements - is, instead of applying a single solid color across the entire image, apply a gradient map as a layer in color blend mode. Play with the colors of the map, but I'd start with a dark version of the color you want on the left side of the gradient and go down to a very light version on the right. You can play with other blend modes, but color blend mode would come closest to the effect you want, I think.
October 5th, 2013
@bobfoto @kannafoot thanks you both
and jason, i was driving and saw it tand took a pic, can't remember if i got of the car
October 5th, 2013
The wire or line on the right hand side is distracting to me as also the post or whatever is is on the very left hand side. Maybe do a slight crop to take those things out and also to take a little bit off the top to even it out. I'm am strictly amateur so it's just a suggestion.
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