Tattoos

[teokf]

Images of my street portraits of people with tattoos. CC is most welcome.

I am not sure if my photos are appearing as it should.

1.



2.



3.

[Shadowman]

Images are visible, nice examples.

[selig1656]

why not in color as to see the art work as a full entity . The fist capture doesn't draw my attention to the tattoo, great subject matter with endless material.

[Manfred M]

A great concept, but the images themselves were taken in conditions that give sub-optimal results:

Image 1 - the busy, bright background "overwhelms" your tattooed subject. Centring the subject in the frame is usually not the best place to place them either. If we remove some of the background, your subject becomes a stronger element in the image. I would crop even tighter, but with the low resolution image here, this is far as I dared to push it.





Image 2 - B&W is a good approach here, but with the strong back-light, there are a lot of bright distractions in the background and the light falling on your subject is not all that effective. Tough shot to pull off without additional lighting (fill flash). A bit of work in post lets me push the shot in a direction that works better for me. Cutting off the arm and hand the way that was done in this shot is usually not effective.




Image 3

Many of the same issue as Image 2. Areas of bright and / or high contrast is what the human visual system keys in on and those need to be downplayed to get the viewer to focus on the subject.

[pschlute]

The last one stands out for me.

[teokf]

Thanks you for the comments.

Manfred M, appreciate your time on the detailed comments.

For images #2 and #3, I already toned down the highlights, but it looks like it was not enough after seeing what you did.

Image #1, I think it should not have been bundled with the other tattoo images. When I took that shot, it was the whole image that caught my attention. The colourful clothings and at that moment he kind of fit into the whole. I hope you get what I mean.

Again, thanks for the critique. Much appreciated.

[Manfred M]

For images #2 and #3, I already toned down the highlights, but it looks like it was not enough after seeing what you did.

It can be difficult to objectively assess one's own work. What one has to look for is whether or not the image is effective and doing what you want it to. If the answer is "no", then more work is needed and if it is "yes", then perhaps you are done. If it is about the clothes, then the man attracts too much attention and he needs to play a much smaller role in the composition. I suspect you can't do that with this image and would have to rephotograph it.

That is one of the things I really like about CiC, people are willing to help and make comments on your work and make suggestions on what else it might need. That doesn't mean you have to agree with what has been written, but even thinking about it can be very helpful.

In general, you want the viewer's eyes to fall and stay on your subject, which means you have to help the viewer to do so. The time honoured approach is to dodge and burn. It takes practice, but I can honestly say that's what I spend 95% of my time doing in post-production.

Image #1, I think it should not have been bundled with the other tattoo images. When I took that shot, it was the whole image that caught my attention. The colourful clothings and at that moment he kind of fit into the whole. I hope you get what I mean.

We can only go on what we see in the image and what you tell us.

With this comment, there is a bit of a quandary. You have an image where the person has a strong, central presence in the shot, yet you tell us that the colourful clothes are what really struck your eye.