SS portfolio again (56k warning)

[livin4lax09]

I decided to not apply last year after I seriously went through my images and decided they weren't good enough for SS, and that I needed to shoot a lot more. So I'm back at square one (well, sort of) and attempting to build a portfolio again. I'll be shooting more before I apply, but I'm looking for comments on the following photos. Just things like which ones you like, which ones you don't, etc. Doesn't have to be long at all, just something like "good= 1,3,4,8 bad=2,5,6,7" I think this forum has seen most of these shots already, but further critiques are appreciated.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Yeah, I know I have to have captions, but I'm currently without my external HD which has all the captions on it. I'll post them as soon as I get back to school.

Thank you much.

[AndersonCAA]

I recently became a member of Sports Shooter and found that to get accepted you have to have a Senior Member sponsor you. Members of the site told me it is very rare that someone will be allowed in without this reference. Luckily, I have a local pro who is a member who sponsored me and I spent a lot of time editing my work and sending it to him to review. He told me the judges look for very tight crops with filled frames, minimal background clutter and emotion, whether it be faces of fans, players, coaches, the mascot, etc. He added that action is always key but the judges want to see the human element exposed in the images. I think you did this well in images 1, 2, 4, 6, and 14 but of course, I'm just another shooter and not a judge.

This Senior Member threw out several of my images that I thought would work in favor of images that emit the emotion thay are looking for.

Being a member is an honor and I have learned a tremendous amount reading message boards and from talking to full-time pros who shoot for the biggies - wire services, major metro newspapers, etc. These guys are very generous with their assistance and have treated me with respect and I've really appreciated it.

[livin4lax09]

yeah I have somone who will sponsor me. Didn't know you were a member! That's exciting. Glad to see you know what they are looking for, and thanks for sharing that info with me. I'll talk a bit with my sponsor and see what he says. Thanks.

[jorgemonkey]

Here are my votes-

Good- 1,4,5,8,10,11

Not necessarily bad, but reasons why I wouldn't pick them:

2- Would love to see a closer crop of the players.

3- I like the photo, but its kindof hard for my eyes to focus on the player with the ball.

6- I'd like to see a closer crop w/o the player on the left hand side. To me just having 1/2 of that player in the shot is distracting.

7- A little closer crop, and the partial body of #13 is coming out of nowhere, right in the middle/bottom of the shot.

9- I go back & forth on this one. I would leave it out since you have a couple images that I think look much better.

12- Again, the background ref & other player make it look cluttered. #11 is much easier to for my eyes to see the action thats going on.

13- I know its just me, but pole vaulting doesn't look that exciting (disclaimer: I've never done it, it looks hard, and I'm too much of a wuss to try it)

14- I would love to see this shot with being able to see the full face of the player. I think showing the whole face of him glaring at the ref would have really made this photo.

These are all my opinions, and overall I say great job!!

[BLS439]

Um, while it's strongly encouraged you have a senior member sponsor your application; it's not necessary. I think your portfolio is pretty good - be careful of your backgrounds. I really started to focus on this when I was applying.

#1 - pretty good. a bit noisy and the spectators in the background are a bit distracting.

#2 - wow. It's good. great capture. Looks like it's got some photoshop to it though. you can see the little white pixels from sharpening and noise reduction. play with it a little to get a better black.

#3 - good action shot, but I think it has too much DOF. Long zoom lenses have a tendency to compress distance when at the longer end of the zoom. With the narrower DOF I think this play would have stood out a bit more and made the background look less busy.

#4 - Like it. Not much else to say. Great facial expression.

#5 - Pretty good. Is the color off just lightly though? The football looks a littl more yellow than brown. Might have been better as horizontal to show all player in the tackle - I'm mixed.

#6 - Good, but I dont like the partial crop of the girl whose running in with her arms open. Especially since it appears the airborn girl is looking at her.

#7 - Noisey. good facial expressions and sharpeness. Either crop tighter or back it out to include #13.

#8 - Good, but I think you need more space in front of the ball and not behind the players.

#9 - Great pan.

#10 - Cool selective color, great color, great clarity, smooth photo.

#11 - Good, but background is a little crooked and the shot's a bit noisey. Try leveling the background, the right's a bit lower than the left.

#12 - Great shot. again a little noisey and crooked. The left is high than the right. The background is great. Try using a little shadow/highlight took to get the refs face to come in.

#13 - great. velvet smooth. If only they were all this smooth!

#14 - eyes are great. shows his determination and anger with the call. but, if you're not paying really close attention you might miss that the older guy is a referee. Back out the crop abit to include the player teammate holding the engry guy back and the patches on the ref's shirt. Seems just too tight. Good noise control!

The problems with the original 1D is noise at higher ISO's. I get it too. I usually get it if I forget to fix my ISO after going from outside to inside or vice-versa. I have some great shots that got killed because I forgot to adjust the ISO.

Great work!

[livin4lax09]

I actually never apply noise reduction to my shot, so #2 doesnt have a weird look from NR. Probably just from sharpening to try and bring back some details. it's a bit motiom blurred. and believe it or not, #12 is not crooked. the ground is perfectly level. It's an illusion because of the curved line on the field. Kinda frustrating, but If I correct for the line, then the horizon becomes crooked. and yeah, I know what you mean about the high noise. If you underexpose and try to bring it back at all, you see a lot of noise. So for that reason, I've started shooting +1/3. I lose a tiny bit of the jerseys, but have a lot smoother color. I'll try throwing #6 into a horizontal crop, because apparently people don't like the chopping of the legs as well. I'm pretty sure the color is on on #5, as it looks just like the other shots from the day, and I didn't correct the color at all. set on sunny wb, and it certainly was that. the lax shots were unfortunately incredibly underexposed then brough back. The sun that day made metering so hard. I was setting Av to overexpose 2/3 (since the clouds kept changing) and I still was underexposing by about 2/3 in the final shot. SO annoying. and I tried bring the ref's face back a bit, but the noise just blows up if I do too much. what you see is a drastic improvement over the original. I really want to get the color right on that diving shot, I have spent lots of time on that shot, but I just can't make it work. If anyone else wants to give it a try, I'd appreciate it. Thanks for the comments everyone.

[BLS439]

Brent, overall I think your work here is stronger than some of the other portfolios I've seen on SS. Even mine is pretty cruddy right now - I need to find some better shots to put up. I think for the football shot you could get all the color the way you like. Then, put up a new color layer and mask it. Then get the football to the right brown you'd like and hide everything else. Does that make sense? It should work.

Yeah, underexposing with the 1D can really kill shots - especially when you try to bring them back.

[livin4lax09]

yep, makes sense. I'll give it a try.

[livin4lax09]

some edited ones. Tell me what you think.





instead of the wider shot...



color corrected and ratio changed



different crop



took a bit off the right



just another one I found...like it or no?

[livin4lax09]

also ?

[BLS439]

Brent, I hope you dont mind but I played with the soccer girls shot. The only NR type filter I used was "Despeckle" on a masked layer.

I like the very last lacrosse shot you posted. Action, expression, pretty clean background, etc. Good color too.

[livin4lax09]

the edges look very jagged on this end, and oversharpened. But no, I don't mind editing my images, I actually like people to play with them to see if they can do better than I can. But how's that crop compared the original one? Also, here's a different/much tighter crop on the football shot that was suggested on a different forum.

[jorgemonkey]

I definately like that last crop of all the football players bunched together. The other crops/adjustments you did also made them come out much better.

[livin4lax09]

to replace other vb one

color-corrected of course