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Critiquing my own ice pictures

This weekend I had the chance to take a few ice pictures during a brief period when the snow was melting.  As an interesting exercise, I thought I would critique some of the better shots from that shoot.  I didn’t get any award winners, but perhaps a critique of why they are not award winners may help me correct this in the future.

This shot has received the warmest reception of the bunch from my wife and some of her relatives.  What I think helps the shot is the reflection in the drop.  It kind of looks like a palm tree and thus has an interesting balance of ‘cold vs. warm’.  I also like the lower background of this shot - in particular the play of green vs. brown on the bottom.  Also helping the shot is the slight diagonal of the icicle.

Things that I do not like about this shot are.

1. There are several blown highlights.  I don’t think any of these are so severe that I could not get rid of them in Photoshop though.
2. The icicle itself is OOF and only the drop has some focus.  However, it too is slightly OOF.
3. The green at the top right needs to be toned down a bit.
4. The top of the icicle, which is OOF, is a bit distracting.
5. Ultimately I don’t think this is a very powerful shot.  It is one that when going through pictures may receive a comment, but that’s about all.

This shot corrects some of the problems of the earlier shot.  The focus on the icicle is much better and there is only one annoying part of the background in the upper right corner that can easily be removed in Photoshop.  There are some blown out areas but they are also easily fixable.

Ultimately though I think this shot is even less interesting than the first one.  It has a reflection in it, but the reflection isn’t that interesting.  It doesn’t really seem to tell a story, though I don’t think it’s a bad shot.

Initially, I almost pressed the delete key when I got to this shot.  After all, though I managed to get the drop in the shot it is clearly OOF.  What made me keep it are the interesting patterns in the background, the decent lighting, and the fact that the icicle above is in focus.

I’m still not sure what to make of this shot.  It shows an effect of a drop in motion with a reflection of its background, but does the motion inferred add to or subtract from the photo?

Right now I’m still undecided whether this is an ‘accidental great shot’ or a ‘near miss’.  I would appreciate opinions on this one.

Related posts:

1. Futility in drops…almost… As many of you likely know, recently we had a decent amount of snow here. It rarely snows here around Seattle and when it does, it’s even rarer for it to stick. Normally the nice thing is we can take a short trip to the mountains and enjoy several feet...
2. You know you’re a photographer when… A few weeks ago while visiting friends during the end of the snow storm we received here, we were all quietly sitting and chatting and looking at the snow fall outside.  My wife mentioned how she was getting sick of this snow and hoped that it didn’t continue for long....
3. How to take snow melt shots As I mentioned yesterday, we received a rare snow shower here outside of Seattle this weekend.  Driving back at night an seeing the snow on the trees, I was excited.  Perhaps if the temperatures dropped that night and I woke up early I could get more shots of the snow...
4. Masterpiece or delete key? Some time ago I took this picture. To be honest, the only reason I kept this shot was because I took a number of shots that day of drops on a Japanese maple.  None of them turned out as I had hoped so I kept a few of the half...
5. Playing with drips and drops While all of the snow we recently got was melting, I took the opportunity to take a number of drop pictures.  I’m happy with this latest attempt.  Sure, there are faults such as the reflection in the drop itself being blurry - but that is mainly because I found these...

Tags: critique, drop, macro, photography