privatebydesign said:
snoke said:
Khalai said:
Sure, result will be still abysmal photo with a bit cleaner shadows. Polish a turd, it's still a turd
Picture interesting. Almost exact to rules.
Sun near top left thirds corner. Sky/water close to top third. Rising angle from bottom right to left third. People close to right third line. Lead eye from people to sun. People looking left. Technically photo good.
But you think turd. ok.
Maybe photographer walk in surprise from dog so take this?
Just goes to show what 'rules' do for your photography. I agree, it is a turd.
While I don't like the composition, I think calling it "awful" is a bit harsh. It's better than 95% of the photos one sees just browsing social networks. And that's just from a composition standpoint. That's leaving out motion blur or harsh direct flash, poor white balance... the list goes on.
With that said, here's my constructive critique. I don't like how the guy's face overlaps the woman. In fact I don't like how much the guy dominates the portrait (blocks a lot of the bride). Another big distractor to me is the lines from the horizon and the concrete land. They make this natural arrow the points to the left. My eyes naturally follow them as they converge.
To me, if the photographer's shooting position is just rotated to his/her left in the realm of 30 to 45 degrees it becomes a much better picture. Sure you lose the sun, but you still get the sky (and you help alleviate your DR issues to boot) and now the concrete land line becomes more level, you separate the bride and groom faces, the guy and dog are actually looking more towards the camera, and you get rid of the grooms chest literally chopping the bride in half.
Besides the rotation, I might add to pan down just a bit, push the horizon closer to the top third line and give some breathing room to the feet, heaven forbid they print the photo and want to frame it and NOT cut of their legs in a real picture frame.
It's all subjective and hindsight is 20/20. But I think "awful" is too harsh and I couldn't in good conscience say that to the photographer. Even the portrait session of a wedding day is very much run and gun because of the limited time.