[namllihs]

Busking on Princes Street, Edinburgh.





And his percussion section.

[namllihs]

That bad?

[lolyton]

Not that bad no!
I'm quite liking the top one, however i feel that his colour is almost too natural to go against an entirely B+W background. I think maybe downing his saturation a little or upping the backgounds a little would work better. I can imagine though that if there isn't a colour difference he would be nowhere near as dominant in the shot thus losing the effect that it has.
The second shot for me is too stagnant. It would have been nice for you to have used a slightly slower shutter and created some blurring of the hands. This would have made the shot in my mind, i do like the composition (shame about the bag in the bottom left), and i'm normally a sucker for the square frame shots.

[Steve]

I think the problem with the top one is that it is a large depth of field and the whole street is just as in focus as your intended main subject. This is further emphasised by your selective colouring to highlight the piper. Controlling the DOF is one of the most important skills people need to learn and is the major difference between ending up with a shot that looks like a snap or a well composed and well thought out photo.

If you wanted to really change and work the first shot then converting it all to mono and applying different levels of blur to isolate the piper would, if done well, give the impression that the end result was what you had in mind when you took the shot.


The second shot has all the required elements but again a couple of simple composition errors (cut off foot and no subject/camera interaction) make this look more like a snap than a thought out photo.

Sorry if this seems like harsh feedback but hopefully you can understand my points.

[namllihs]

Originally Posted by Steve

Sorry if this seems like harsh feedback but hopefully you can understand my points.

No problem, I would sooner have the harsh feedback than none at all.

Thank you both for the comments.