The bi-weekly challenge and critiques [+ travel photography tips]

Published: Sat, 05/18/24

Updated: Thu, 05/23/24

Hi!

I hope you’ve been having a good week! Here in Michigan, we’ve been getting some sun, as well as some rare glimpses of the northern lights. Did anyone in the dPS community manage to take some northern lights photos this past weekend? If so, I’d love to see them!

Anyway, in today’s newsletter, I have a few items to share:

A new dPS bi-weekly challenge
Some travel photography resources
Two more photo critiques

Let’s get to it!

The dPS bi-weekly photo challenge: Reflections in Nature

From Sime:

We have dabbled with reflections before now, but for this fortnight’s challenge, you need to find a reflection in nature. (Here’s a whole bunch on reflections from our blog)

A fresh puddle on a road (watch out for cars!) A still lake or river, or even the bay (like my photo of Swan Bay, below) add trees or clouds for an interesting element. I find more minimalist landscapes work well with reflections, but that’s just me 🙂

Make sure you include the hashtags #dPSWeeklyChallenge and #dPSReflectionsInNature in your post, here in the comments or over on social media. You can tag us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter!

How to capture beautiful travel photos

Travel photography is a ton of fun, but it can also be stressful. You’re limited on gear, you’re in a new area, and you often only have a few days (or even a few hours) to spend at each location.

Fortunately, over the years, we’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the most experienced travel photographers on the planet. These photographers have written dozens of tutorials sharing their carefully honed approach to different elements of travel photography: planning, gear selection, lighting, and more.

So today, I wanted to share a few of those articles. If you enjoy travel photography - whether you take trips dedicated to shooting or you just travel and bring along your camera - then I encourage you to read some (or all!) of them. You never know what nuggets of wisdom you might come across!

First, we have several handy articles covering gear selection:

Next, we have some pieces on planning and preparation so you can make the most of your time:

And finally, we have some tips and tricks to help you improve your camera settings, compositions, lighting choices, and more:

Two more photo critiques

Once again, thanks so much to everyone who sent in images for critique! We had some great submissions this week, and I really enjoyed going through them and viewing the community’s incredible work.

(For those of you who would like to see your images critiqued in a future newsletter, just hit Reply to this message and send along a file or two! But make sure you mention that the images are indeed for critique in the email body or subject line, and please make sure the files are JPEGs and at least 1000 pixels on the long end!

First, we have a lovely hydrangea close-up from Paula C, who notes that the image was shot with a Panasonic Lumix GX85 using a 30mm macro lens at f/2.8, 1/320s, and ISO 200:

What I like:

Paula, I love how intimate this image feels. You’ve done a great job getting up close so that the frame is almost completely filled with the flowers - which is often important in this type of close-up shot, as it keeps the viewer’s attention on the main subject - and I also like the angle you’ve chosen, which has put the bulk of the flowers roughly parallel to the camera sensor.
Relatedly, you’ve captured a lot of very nice detail. Where the flower petals are in focus, there’s such a sense of texture; I feel like I could reach out and touch them!
I also like the sense of harmony and rhythm here, thanks to the organic arrangement of pink flowers. My eyes keep hopping from flower to flower as I look around the frame.
You’ve also chosen some great lighting for close-up flower photography! This looks like it was shot either in heavy shade or on a cloudy day, which works well for this type of subject, as it minimizes distracting shadows, emphasizes texture/detail, while also helping those colors pop!

Items to improve:

To my eye, the photo looks a little dark. If you were to brighten up the image a bit, I think that could make it even more eye-catching. The problem with brightening files in post-processing, though, is that it makes noise more apparent, especially in shadow areas - though this does depend on your camera sensor, as well as your ISO setting, so you could always try it and see if you like the result! Looking at your settings, if you were to photograph this subject again in the same light, you could dial in some positive exposure compensation; this would increase the exposure by reducing the shutter speed, and I do think you have a little bit of leeway in that regard!
As I mentioned above, I like your intimate approach, where you’ve filled the frame almost completely. It’s a minor point, but I would love it if the hydrangea flowers covered the entire frame - the dark gaps, especially in the bottom right and left corners, break up the flow of the image and draw the eye. Depending on the size of the flowers and your lens’s magnification capabilities, getting even closer might not have been an option, but it’s just something to bear in mind! (One thing I often do in scenarios where I’m struggling to fill the frame is move around the flower and approach it from different directions. I don’t know what was outside the frame, but it’s possible that by moving slightly up and to the left, you could avoid those dark spots.)
One more thought: I would love for the center of the flower in the top middle portion of the image to be sharp. (Right now, it looks like your focus is just in front of that area.) I really like your wide-aperture approach, and with just one sharp flower center, the image would have a clearer anchor point to complete the composition. When working handheld at high magnifications, it’s often helpful to use manual focus or to lock focus in roughly the right area, then slowly move your camera forward and backward while firing off a few shots.

Second, we a beautiful rural landscape photo from Lisa B:

What I like:

First of all, Lisa, I love the quiet ambiance of this shot; by choosing to frame just the road and the farm structures, and by shooting a relatively subdued sunset, the image has a sense of stillness that I really appreciate. And I like how those barrels of hay are stacked and arranged out in the open, like they’re waiting for something or someone.
I like the simple color palette: blues in the structures and the sky, browns and greys in the road and the land, and pinks along the horizon. I think that also contributes to the ambiance that I mentioned!
I also like the sense of depth you’ve created. The road moving clearly from the foreground to the background, that small fence, the clear horizon line, and the slight roll of the land along the right and left portion edges of the frame all contribute to the illusion of three-dimensionality here, and it makes the viewer feel like they could walk through the image.

Items to improve:

I’m noticing some unusual yellow spots/halos where some of the trees meet the sky - perhaps this was caused during your editing workflow?
It also looks like certain parts of the image are unusually soft; for instance, the distant portion of the road looks far softer than the blue barn. That might be due to lens aberrations - lenses tend to perform better in the center than on the edges, and the sharpness distribution across the plane of focus isn’t always symmetrical. If that’s the case, you might see improvements if you narrow the lens aperture, since lenses tend to be sharpest around f/8 or so. (This will also help you maintain sharpness from the foreground to the background!)
A few thoughts on framing and composition: I like the farm structures and the road, but right now, the overall scene feels imbalanced. There’s a lot of empty space in the midground on the right, while the road is positioned far off to the left. If you were to crop in from the right, you might be able to gain a greater sense of balance. That said, it could be interesting to try approaching this scene from a few different spots; for instance, what if you were to move forward a bit, then swing your camera slightly to the right? Or if you were to move significantly forward and frame the road more tightly? Often, simply walking in different directions can reveal compelling new compositional approaches that you might otherwise have missed!
I’m also noticing a few small distractions throughout the frame. There’s that water and drainpipe in the bottom right corner, which draws the eye away from the main subjects - you could crop this away, though if you were to photograph this scene again, you could potentially just move forward slightly to eliminate those areas. There are also trees/shrubs that are cut off by the left edge of the frame, which I’d be tempted to crop away.

Well, that’s it for today! I hope you have a great week ahead, and I look forward to receiving some more photos for critique!

Talk to you next Saturday,

Jaymes Dempsey (and the rest of the dPS team)

PO Box 1181, Blackburn North, Victoria 3130, AUSTRALIA

Unsubscribe | Change Subscriber Options