I gave you lots of constructive criticism above and, as you asked, I posted examples of my feeble attempts to take what I consider to be good pictures. If you want I could criticize my own shots, too: the portrait lacks depth, has problems with skin tones and harsh highlights, and the composition is unbalanced given the very symmetrical pose and would do better with a soft backlight to screen right illuminating the hair in silhouette, except the spill from that would have brightened up my background too much and arguably the shape of the catch light is problematic, too. The portrait that inspired it is a better photograph. The horizon line is too even on the second one, too centered; I didn't have a shift lens and couldn't move it without distorting vertical perspective and with that taken into consideration I'm happy, though the top right corner needs to be darker for the sake of composition but can't be for the sake of retaining tonal hierarchy; the density of detail in the trees is too much for the otherwise very simple composition, etc. The third one is way overbaked and a picture of clouds for god's sake--what a cliche. I only posted these because you called me out as a bad photographer because I'm apparently a "purist." The Crewdson and Adams photos I posted I think are very, very good, but even they aren't perfect.
But more important than that: I don't like HDR and I probably won't have similar taste to those who do. There's no getting past taste. Some of the other photos you've taken are okay, none I saw are great, but very few are. Can we just move on?
But more important than that: I don't like HDR and I probably won't have similar taste to those who do. There's no getting past taste. Some of the other photos you've taken are okay, none I saw are great, but very few are. Can we just move on?
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