Critiquing a Photograph

A lot of my work teaching Digital Art Photography and Photo Restoration at betterphoto.com involves critiquing photographs. This is just what I'm going to do with this photo, a photo taken on my recent trip to Cabo.

Photo Critique--

1. This photo has some great contrast, not only in color but in texture, the textures of the splashing water and those of the old yellow rope.
2. The color and texture of the rope changes in the first third of the frame. It goes from blue (covered with blue plastic) to yellow. The yellow occupies two-thirds of the frame, thus following the Rule of Thirds.
3. The exposure in this photograph is relatively good as there are no blasting whites or blanketing blacks in the most important areas of the photo.
4. The photo uses a natural effect (water being churnned into white capped bubbles), which gives the photo a lot of depth (some of the bubbles jump from the backround to the foreground just above the rope. Another way to achieve this effect, except using another natural phenomanon is to photograph smoke or mist.
5. The light increases from the splashed water the closer you get to the frazzled knot in the rope's center. That, my friends, was a stroke of luck. Part of composition is just that--luck.

photography, photography critique, rule of thirds, color and texture