Brutal Wildlife Photography Critique/Contest
hey guys welcome to the next critique the community today we're going to be critiquing Wildlife photography but if you would like to be a part of the next critique we are doing architectural photography and the world famous Mike Kelly he is going to be the guest judge I'm excited for this it's always fun to have people who are experienced in that genre tell us our opinions are wrong third place and second place are going to get a free tutorial from the fstoppers store may I suggest a tutorial by Mike Kelly himself and first place we are going to be giving away $11,000 cash so definitely check out this contest and all future contests at fstoppers.com contests all right let's get into this Wildlife critique the prizes for this one are going to be third place free tutorial from the fstopper store second place $500 cash first place $1,000 cash here's a nice snowy image this image was taken by Martin cre and he says this was simply a squirrel in its natural environment taken on the Nikon d750 Tamron 150 to 600 mm lens at 600 mm 132 hundredth of a second at ISO 1250 one thing that we always struggle with with these critiques is like how much value do you place on real images versus images that were taking in in a zoo or an aquarium Oh I thought you were going to say how much value do you place on the commercial viability of an image I mean that's something to consider as well for wildlife that's really challenging for me because I don't know how images like this are published like is this something that's on America's Funniest Home Videos or is this something the National Geographic is going to be excited to put in their magazine like I don't I don't know the difference there and I you know if if you told me that this was a you know there was only 1,000 of these squirrels left in existence you can tell by the hairy ears um and and I had to you know hike through Serbia for a month before I found one I'd be like oh my gosh but I'm pretty sure this is just a normal squirrel wherever this Photograph was taken and it's up to each photographer to kind of tell the story the fact that this photographer literally just said squirrel in a natural environment tells me this is a very normal squirrel in a very normal environment maybe even taken in the photographer's backyard okay I mean I'm ready to rate it are you yeah three two one three stars we agree three stars in our rating system is a solid image four would be excellent and five would be world class I feel like I really like this image I could see this on a calendar you know but that being said I don't know that I can go four stars just because it's it's just a squirrel in the snow you know I know this was shot a little wider at 600 mm but you still uh you still can crop in a little bit and I feel like the crop is something that kind of bothers me a little he's just dead center I don't know what this is on the left I keep thinking it's like the neighbor's fence maybe it's just a branch but if you crop in just a little bit it almost makes it feel like the little Mound on the right that you barely see could be like his home and he's coming out of the nest and he's you know he's like looking at you like don't mind me I don't have nuts yet but I'm going to get them um the crop is such a small little thing to tweak on this but I feel like that's kind of the main critique I can give with this I think I agree I I didn't even for some reason I didn't even consider that but yeah it does feel a little wide I feel like it needs to be cropped in a little bit this image was taken by Andy shrew I met this early morning Patrol of a flock of geese on my daily tour through a small Nature Reserve nearby Frankfurt Germany right in front of our house at that time of year end of May we often have this kind of right after Sunrise fog in some ways it makes the image a little less interesting because you know how common it is but on the other side it makes you feel like he's prepared and he went out and he took a picture and um it's just not you know the idea that you're going to get those birds going right in front of you know that cool Tower in the background I don't know if that's a church or what but um that really makes it for me personally the one the two things that really bother me about this image and you know I think it would be unethical to change it I don't like the overlapping Birds I don't like the birds that are touching each other I feel like those back three birds on the left look amazing the front bird on the right looks amazing but the four birds that are clumped together in the middle ruin it for me Maverick and Goose there like riding side by side bothers you I don't like it I don't like it and then the other thing that I don't really like is the bush in the bottom left but man the fog and then the fact that they have that Tower in the background is awesome and I love the tree in the upper left I feel like it's so cool but uh see the tree in the upper left is something that kind of like bothers me a little bit you were pointing out the bush I either want to see neither of them there or goes back to your ethical question can you just generative fill with AI a similar Bush on the right and left to where it feels like you're looking through more of a a little window of foliage that's what's so difficult about Wildlife photography for us is because we come from a commercial photography background so we've always taken the position of do whatever you have to do to create the best image possible because we're just trying to sell this to a client who's going to use it to sell some product product yeah so I don't care if the bush is real or not make the image look incredible but with Wildlife photographers there is this like code of honor it's like no no no this is what it looked like and I'm you know I might be changing the exposure the density a little bit but that's it I do like that the trees are on the left hand side and the birds are kind of flying out of it as opposed to where if they were on the right hand side flying into it I think it would compositionally look a little strange I agree I just uh I I want it to be on both sides and you're like shooting through the meadow and and you're kind of capturing them in this more candid moment where they weren't supposed to be seen but I love the tones of the background I love the crushed blacks of the foreground of the Silhouettes and then the background isn't that yeah um I don't know how much of that was done in post versus just the lighting conditions you know allowing them to go as dark as they are but uh we should probably rate this three two one solid three three stars I feel kind of similarly to the other I I I almost feel like with Photoshop I might move this to definitely a four if not a five but then it becomes fake and you Wildlife photographers are weird before we move on I just noticed something might change the way we view all this conversation is there some funny business well if I zoom into the backbird is there like a weird halo around him that's not around some of the other birds or is that just a reflection in the background what is going on here Andy did you did you do Photoshop and then do it poorly CU if you're going to do Photoshop fix the jumbled up birds in the middle I don't know and it makes me question all the birds now cat did he do good Photoshop everywhere except the last one I don't know all right next up this was the highest Community rated image that does not mean you've won anything but uh this was the highest rated by the community this was taken by Benjamin salb this image is an 80 frame Focus bracket of a living paper wasp that's another one of these ethical things Andre the photographer in our tutorial is like it has to be alive you can't shoot something dead and so the whole tutorial is about I don't know if he does 80 that seems a little extreme but now with these new Sony cameras that take like 20 frames a second he said he used the focus bracketing feature on the om-1 90 mm 2x macro to get all of the frames firing with a flash at 10 frames per second oh interesting okay so it's it's not that 8 seconds yeah so he literally holds the shutter and just barely moves forward or pulls out well he says it's a focus bracketing feature so maybe the camera camera's doing it does automa that was the way you used to have to do is you'd have to fire a ton of Flash and just like rock the camera right wind up with a bunch of images that are with a sliver of focus and then you know let the software compile them together stack them up very interesting and it's so cra like with 87 images the depth of field is still like you know 1 millimeter yeah I mean if you look at uh I don't know the 3D structure of this wasp but like the lower part of his nose or down here still seems less focused than the top part yeah so I don't know if that's because the focal plane is tilted or something or it's probably a little Focus bracket error done in Photoshop but still the point is just you can you can really tell how shallow it is very interesting are you ready to rate this I think so I don't know how to rate bugs at all we did a tutorial with Andrea Molen called mastering macro photography and some of his work again I don't really know what I'm looking at or how difficult it is or whatever but I look at it and I go that's five stars that's just it it blows my mind this image of this wasp is good maybe maybe it is world class but something about it's not blowing me away so you ready to rate this I am all right three two one I'm in between a three and a four I don't know I'm give them the benefit of the doubt okay the the thing that I think bothers me cuz I I can't give this a five but I was saying is this a solid image or is this like an incredible image there's something about the fill of the light I just want the light a little high this sounds so weird to say like the position of the light for a portrait of a bug but I feel like it's got so much specular highlights it's you ands get that we've never but there's Another Part Of Me Maybe the portrait part of me that wants the light a little higher up so that it's got a little Shadow and you start to see the three-dimensionality of his face cuz I have to imagine I don't know if they're his eyes or some kind of sensors they almost look flat because they're lit flat but I want to believe they're curved and the bottom of them would have more Shadow than the top and so it's such a weird thing to like oh you should have moved the The Flash is probably mounted to the camera with some kind of diffuser you know diffusion but I just or maybe in Photoshop is this going too far just to burn in the little parts to make it Contour the bug's cheekbones I don't know it's it seems as I say this I know I sound ridiculous even suggesting that but or even the bottom I want like a little vignette maybe to make the body a little darker there is a part of me that kind of doesn't like the little bit of his hands showing up in that corner I mean these all seem so minor um but when you when you're doing macro at this level you just had a picture that Andre took of a spider and it almost feels like you could be pulled back to show the whole insect and it becomes a little less macro or you can do something just right up there where you're magnifying things five 6X I don't know what this is they're all going to look like this right it's going to be a face yeah there's no room to do anything else all right but you gave it a three what are your thoughts you just I don't I like I said yeah it looks cool it just doesn't look as cool to me as other macro shots of bugs that's why I gave it a three I'm not offended by a four it could be a four but when I see a world class bug photo I know it all right let's move on here's a good example of is this shot in nature or is this shot in a zoo do you want to know or do you want to try to rate it without knowing I don't like this image as much and so I don't feel like I even care it's like I feel like there's other things that I just I don't know that take higher priority for me but I I was just in um the Atlanta aquarium if you guys have never been there and you happen to you know travel through Atlanta you get stuck in Atlanta airport you're looking for something to do go to this aquarium AB it is like a wonder of the world they have whale sharks in captivity I I think it's the only place on Earth that does and as I'm walking through this aquarium I'm just thinking like I could get better underwater photography here in two seconds than we have in our entire lives of scuba diving and try you know we've got all the fancy equipment and the lighting and everything and we go down there and we can't even like get a fish in Focus let alone lit correctly and then I go in this aquarium and I'm like one you can pay to scuba dive in there yeah so you could go in there for like 300 bucks and scuba dive with the craziest fish ever and but they also have all of the rocks and everything built out to where it looks real in there so you could scuba dive and get it or you could just shoot through the glass and get the best fish photography ever taken with probably your phone you know yeah so I'm like does it matter should it matter like when it comes to stock photography nobody cares they just want a good picture of a dolphin or whatever you know that's funny I've bought stock many times I need them for articles or whatever and when I'm looking through a stock site for an image the hat that we're wearing right now of did was it how was it shot and was it real is it from an aquarium like I don't even care I haven't thought about that once maybe even you would type in aquarium fish because you want it to look good like I don't know if I've gone that far but I just know if I'm seeing pictures of sharks or something something like I just want the picture I want the end product you know right right so this image here let's go ahead and rate it okay I feel like this is my favorite image so far really we going to debate the prizes at the end I'm ready I'm ready three two one I'm going four on this one man I might be two this is our biggest divide in a long time yeah why why it feels like there was not enough light in the f has been pulled so hard things are like the Shadows look weird uh it feels like on the left here there's like weird it just feels like it was taken with a cheap lens it do feel like something weird is happening on weird vignetting and chromatic aberration and like I don't know like it feels grungy I feel like I can see the lighting condition in his eyes there is not a lot of shade and natural light hitting him because it's covered by trees that's probably introducing a lot of green and weird tones in there you know this could be lit with a strobe which would never be done but if it could I can just imagine how beautiful the light could be on this little monkey but instead it just feels like I mean there are a lot of redeeming qualities about this image I love the detail I love looking at his hands and seeing like the nail that's broken and it's very interesting maybe because like we're so closely related to this animal like and having children of her own I just look at it a little differently and think oh it's at this early developmental stage but from a photographic standpoint just feels like the the patchy light in his eyes it's not good catch lights the file looks like it's just salvaged in some way I don't know it it's it's not a snapshot but I'm having a hard time pushing it into that three category but you on the other hand have pushed it well past three so explain yourself so I think my biggest issue with this I'm not seeing all this chromatic aberration stuff you're complaining about look at that leaf over there doesn't it look like something weird is happened on the left side fake depth of field I don't know I don't know what that is that's weird but my I think my biggest complaint and it's not that big of a complaint is the colors of this I feel like it's it's got that weird raw conversion color from like you know it hasn't been converted to RGB it's like Adobe it's still in the Adobe color space something like that and then yeah it you export it as a JPEG but it's in the wrong color space and it looks weird and uh you know web browser that's what it looks like I dislike that but I just find this animal to be super interesting super cute I love I love its you know um body posture I love the angle of the shot shooting down on this thing a little bit and to take it to the next level this was taken on location in the Philippines this is a tarer and it can only be found on the island of beh and it's he says it's the size it can fit in the palm of his hand it was taken on an Nikon D800 with a 200 to 500 millimet lens at 500 mm f56 at 1600 ISO 150th of a second handheld handheld I don't even understand how that's possible handheld at 150th of a second at 500 mm most of my imag is at 150 at any focal length are blurry right I don't see how this is possible it does it does make me wonder at 500 mm at 5.6 if that's the like equation to where I'm seeing the weirdness of the depth of field like if it was I don't think they make a 500 2.8 it's probably like F4 but there's there like I think something subconsciously I've noticed is that the lower feet toes yeah seem out of focus so it makes me believe that it's super shallowed up the field but then the Leaf over here feels kind of sharp and barely out of focus there's also something weird in the upper right the upper right has like so there's something with the depth of field that makes me feel like this is a cheap lens or that it has been blurred in an unnatural way and post and it's not consistent I agree but with the smallest crop ever or with you know like that something in Photoshop yeah you you remove the weird part out and you're good so I don't know I just just really like maybe I just like this animal and uh it's it's a super unique animal I've never seen it before what if he was super deadly and carried all these diseases then you would be like ah I don't really want to be around him that's like a drop Bear all right next up what is a drop bear I think it's a joke in um Australia it's their koalas they call them drop bears but they they come up with these they say they like jump from trees and they like attack humans and stuff but they're they're just a super lazy cute bear um but I I thought it was real for a while cuz I read something online about it and they had like Photoshopped it with blood and I was like damn what is that and then it's not real oh we' have moved into like the Fine Art world of yeah now when I saw this image I was like something fishies going on with this image and so I wanted to add it because I was like something's not right with this image what do you what do you think's going on here how was this taken well now you have me wondering so okay so when you first saw it you were like it's just well no photographed in the studio I know I mean I doubt this is in the studio like I would think this is on location and they've like selected it really well but now like the way you said it I'm thinking is this like infared infrared photography because of the whites and stuff like you have thinking a little even further extreme than just a black and white conversion or something but yeah um I've never seen a peacock like this it's pure white so I mean maybe the infrared idea is not too crazy but I always want to say you were out at a Middleton Plantation and you see this bird and like nobody would do this but this is where my mind goes is somehow you have a person with a black foam core that goes behind the bird far away and you're able to capture it to where it's kind of behind black and then you could just like pull everything down but like that's not what anybody does instead they do you know frequency separation or what does a a liia does the uh Luminosity masks where you pull down everything that's in shade and you separate it from the background um but it does have like a studio Quality Lighting but a lot of times like just good natural light can do that too so I don't I don't know it looks like he's lit from above with open shade or some kind of soft box or something but this is defin I don't say definitely I don't think this is in the studio I think this is out on location but all that being said I really do like this image before you reveal whatever you're about to reveal so this was taken by johans Walter this image was taken of a white peacock in a zoo in Germany okay with a 5D Mark iiii and a 70 to 200 post production converted to black and white cleaned up darken the background to minimal minimalize the whole picture minimalize minimize minimize okay he wrote minimalize but um it's a translation yeah and a little bit of and a little bit of dodging and burning okay I mean that makes sense to me that seems like how most people would do it but like it just seems so cheap right it's like you shot it in a zoo and then you black out the background in Photoshop and then you dodge it and burn it to make it look like it was shot in the studio or whatever it sounds cheap yeah but the does it matter it looks cool and well okay so here's a conversation we could open up if you're going to do fine art photography I don't know that everyone calls everything fine art right but if you just put this up on your website and put it up for sale I don't know that you're going to sell any of these but if you have a series you make a like you're kind of known for taking pictures of wild animals or birds in the studio and like you have the behind the scenes and the process and you do the whole Peter lick treatment where it's like this is one of a kind we got this crazy bird in the studio and like I I did it I can prove it and like it has this extra story layer I think that this sort of thing could be very valuable people might you could I mean there's been photographers that publish books like this coffee table books and so I kind of feel like maybe you need to do that to make it more valuable in the marketplace especially with AI and everything being darkened and post so I don't know I really do like the way this image looks but if I rate this a four would I pay money like I would pay for a four I don't know it's I want something more on the back end but also is this bird like mangi is that is that Peak peacock right there or is that cuz it's the males that have the really pretty feathers right I think it's the males that that are the best and if you look at the feathers you don't see those eyes yeah everywhere but yeah it just looks like it's kind of cool the way it's looking back through the feathers but I don't know let's it's impactful photo I mean if you're going through a feed like you see that image you know for sure three two one three stars we agree next up now what do you think about this one you've read some of these so I'm just going to make up this little story time in Patrick's imagination yep I think that they put this camera on a tripod or you know some kind of pedestal low they saw the Bears coming so they're like there's Bears coming and then like somehow they lured the bear with like some fish or something by the camera and then had a trigger or a timer um you know if you take this type of wildlife photography there's probably all kinds of triggers that we're not even aware of but how did they get the Bear in this natural environment to go straight to the camera that doesn't seem like something a bear would be interested in um and then you also have the like water right at that you know we used to shoot things on the beach all the time and there's that perfect place where you have the dry rocks and sand but then you have the Reflection from the water he's walking in the perfect spot um I kind of feel like he set this up and then like I said put something that the bear wanted to eat and then he got far enough away to where he could go retrieve the camera later but I don't know it's pretty cool so this was taken by Leon Lum and they said that they have been working on this for years um in in the sense that they've just always wanted to have a wide angle shot of an Alaskan grizzly bear this is a well-known bear um the name of the bear is crimp and basically they just over time learned that like this bear was fairly docile it they were afraid that you know the bear would attack the camera or whatever but they just put the um the camera in path and the bear just walked up to it to just sniff it so there's no food or anything like that okay what do you think about photographically anything else about the Horizon the clouds the lighting the postprocessing I don't think it's a very good photo it's it's impressive for what it is because you know it's like a dangerous animal and it's looking right into the camera but I just don't think it's it's that good looking of an image you want more expression out of him and you want uh her her her her um I don't know I don't know why I don't like pawing at the camera fish in the mouth or the weird Horizon looks like the camera's not straight and the fact that it's cropping off the top of the Bear's head I don't there's no like Mount McKinley in the background Denali maybe you don't have something else like pulling you in I mean I see all of that I've Just Seen amazing bare photos before and then you know you watch the planet Earth documentaries online it's like the most incredible footage ever MH of animals right in the camera lens and everything and this just isn't doing it for me so he needs to spend more years more it took them years to get and you're just like all right you ready ready you rate it yeah three two one I'm going to give it I almost gave this two yeah man I can't give it a two I can't give it a two because of like what it is and I realize how difficult it is but you know what if this was shot at a zoo but it's not I know but if it was and and what if this was like some trained bear and you just go to like the bear Handler's house and then you just shoot this on your phone I've watched enough documentaries where I don't think there's a trained bear the second you think he's trained is the second you die I don't know I think it brings up an interesting point because it's so wide and you can tell it's in nature it immediately gives it more value than if this was taken to where oh it isn't a zoo and it's like the subconscious it's kind of answering the question we've had if it matters but it's answering that by showing more of the scene which solves that piece of the puzzle I I really like it I gave it a four I I do like there I wish the lighting could have been more dramatic from the side or I wish the landscape in the background was a little more exciting maybe you could like grab the right hand side and just pull it down and warp it so The Horizon's a little more straight and not get it to look too wonky unlike head shot do I hate that a part of his head's cropped a little bit and I want to see the full head but it also makes it feel like you're there you know like this is the moment when he's either going to kill you or snip you I just use it as like a gender it's like here in Puerto Rico all the words are feminine or masculine you cannot miss gender this this what about like cars or guitars people are always talking about She's a Beauty yeah there's a she because it doesn't have a gender yeah but animals are kind of like cars and guitars to me it's like whatever okay move on next so I saw this image when I just briefly scrolled through this to see how well this contest was doing in terms of posts I remember seeing this image now was this taken in real life or was this taken in aquarium in a zoo this is definitely real life um why well cuz I think it's a it's a real animal yes but was it taken in a zoo I mean this is exactly the little scene that they would build in a Not Aquarium but a terranium yeah the word yeah um I mean I feel like you know the answer and you're pressing me on this so I'm going to say yes this was shot in captivity no it wasn't whoa Thomas and L took this photo in the choco rainforest of Columbia with a 5dsr 100 mm lens F16 one tenth of a second I guess he was shooting on a tripod iso400 and then he says he achieved achieved a cinematic look kind of like Jurassic world feeling using Photoshop with color grading cleaning dodging and burning and Artistic Touch whatever that means all that being said I really like it I do too I think it's cool and that's like one of the coolest lizards I've ever seen if I was a lizard I'd want my head to look like that yeah do you think it holds like rain and he can constantly like he can go over there and lick it down he's always got plenty of water let's rate it three two one four stars this is our highest rated image yet I um I like it but again the rarest lizards in the world are at these zoos and they're in these perfectly lit Teran terrariums terraniums terrariums and you can just put your phone up there and get shots that look like this so what does that that mean does it mean that this is of less value or does it mean this is of more value because this is one of the few images that is real next up all right like every image now I look at through the vein of or the lens of AI imagery right like that that's an incredible photograph M if it's truly a photograph are they on a multi-tiered boat they're on like the the the third story we just sold our boat what is the the top of the boat hel or the Crow's Nest definitely I mean that's maybe what we called it but are they way up there with a lens shooting down or is this a drone shot and they're using the Drone to capture it's just the angle makes this really really interesting so this was taken by Nuno Alves and he said this was captured I assume Nuno was a man uh this was captured on a dolphin watching trip a few miles off the coast in logos Portugal but they're on a boat yeah um it was in July and on this day the sea was very calm and had no wind which is rare these conditions made the water look almost like glass we were lucky to be approached by a small group of dolphin and this mother and calf came very close to the boat for a moment I captured this moment while they were together coming up for a breath and almost cutting the surface of the water I used a Nikon d750 a 50mm 1.4 interesting wow so I want to know where he was positioned on the boat because this was shot with a DSLR at an angle that looks very top down you know yeah wow it's incredible yeah and the fact that like they are not through the water yet like you can see it pushing off of the mother's forehead you know and creating that pillow of water it looks so good cuz I mean we've seen dolphin so many times that it's not really that exciting anymore everyone's like dolphin dolphin I'm like all right dolphin we've been on excursions in Hawaii where we follow dolphin and swam with dolphins that was amazing that was amazing so like for me like an image has to be incredible to get excited about dolphins and then I know you see this and you try to take the picture with your camera like how it looks right like we just did a big video shooting a yacht with crystal clear water and dolphins and those shots still never look like this you know no and so I don't know I just feel like maybe be I'm bringing my own personal experience of being around Dolphins to know how difficult and amazing this is and I like that but then it makes me feel like maybe I haven't been fair to some of the other images I don't know um let's rate it three two one man I'm gonna go five on this wow I mean how many fives have we ever thrown in our lifetime wow world class I mean yeah I I this is just this is my favorite image I've seen so far this looks this is one of the few images that you could blow up huge and put it in the entryway of your house and not feel like oh it's too over the top and it's muted and it's beautiful it tells a story it's there's so many things about this that are really really nice um I love this image like this is great all right what I mean what are your thoughts you you you like it a lot too I do I do like it a lot I I just feel like you know like you said we've been lucky enough we see dolphin all the time um but to capture them in this environment with the mama and the baby almost breaching the water but not there and have it be that that smooth and that clear it's just and have that angle yeah the angle is really nice as well um maybe this is my favorite image of the critique as well let's move on all right now this is another image that I saw and I went what the heck is going on here is this AI can you guess how this was taken the bir the bird looks dead it looks like taxid I mean it's got to be it's got to be Studio lit right like look at these catch lights but this feels like it's got to be in the studio or in captivity in some way where they've set this up and but I mean it looks like there's 1 two 3 four five strobes going off which is not the best lighting to do for this anyway like I think the lighting is kind of boring and awful in my opinion but yeah reveal it to us how is this taken so Wings yeah the the first thing that I noticed when I was scrolling through these images was how in the world you have sharp hummingbird Wings it has to be strobed right like I don't I don't know what shutter speed you have to be at to capture hummingbird Wings you need that new a93 yeah 8 80,000 of a second 8,000th of a second yeah and then I'm looking at the lighting and I'm like it's so weird and flat it looks like it's been lit like cross lighting or something so I click on it this was taken by Mike Mahoney this was taken of a hummingbird with a 70 to 200 mm lens he had speed lights above below and right and left it was shot at 160th of a second F16 and I used the flash speed to freeze the action it was shot during midday that that doesn't quite make sense to me unless he like cut out the back I would think if you shoot at ISO 100 F16 160th of a second in midday you are not getting a black background well it all depends like what the midday light is doing imagine does it well imagine midday and you're still in the shade or you're against a black canvas or I don't know like midday Sun a black canvas midday Sun means that's where the sun is but it doesn't mean that the sun is affecting your scene like couldn't you be under a tent or you could be I just wish he had said that when he says it was shot during midday to me that means it's bright man I just want like if you're going to do this I want the light to be coming from down like you'd shoot a car and maybe if you're going to go crazy have it coming up too to where it's like not straight on from the lens and you create like a really crazy lighting pattern this just looks it look toxid is a great example you know it just looks like you're documenting this species like perfectly In This Very sterile way right and I don't personally like that it is impressive how it was taken and it's crazy to know that the bird is actually flying through the field of view but I just I don't know I'm not a big fan of this many strobes coming from all the Angles and filling in everything it just feels a little weird to me this image feels kind of like the bear to me where I respect the work that it took to get this but I don't think the finished image is a good photograph I think if it had I don't know it's hard to imagine if it wasn't on black like that's the difference with the bear is the bear I still feel like it's in its natural environment and that gives it some value the fact that this is on black just like the peacock shot it starts to make me wonder maybe only a photographer would think these thoughts but is it cut out is it dead is like I'm bringing all of this other stuff to the image that I think the photographer would not want me to bring to the image right and with the bear the only thing I had was how did it lure the bear to the camera yeah but that's not necessarily a negative thought that's kind of like a thought-provoking interesting thought whereas is the bird dead why does it look so crazy has it been cut out like those are less than IDE thoughts that you're that I'm thinking about let's rate it oh we never rated it three two one I'm gonna go two I mean maybe I should go two like I'm giving it a three just because of like I know how hard it was to get it I mean it's also one of those things where like if your whole portfolio is this yeah then all of a sudden it's got to be a three and it's kind of your thing and it's like quirky and weird and like but you're the guy who shoots the birds in this way but as's a standalone if you mix this in with all of the other pictures we've seen and it's your Wildlife portfolio I'd be like man this stands out and it feels a little weird to me all right next up how do you how do you immediately feel about the little white border and then like the name on it does it take you back to an older time older and better times yes yeah I do not like the the the logo or Mark of this photographer I think it's super cheesy um but this image looked very interesting to me I'm going to just zoom out past all of it to uh help me see past the Border I think what stood out to me about this image is the color of the background I'm so used to seeing tigers with like you know Africa Brown Browns and yeah dead trees and stuff and so the fact that this has these teals and greens and dark Blues back there it's just beautiful but then now that makes me go back to like is this in Vegas with the two guys that you know do the tiger thing I mean the fact that he's got a cut under his eye makes me think that this is more wild cuz it wouldn't probably have that in captivity but what do I know maybe the tigers are still fighting each other for food and stuff um and the tiger does look wet and it's raining so all that is consistent you want to rate it yeah three two one I'm going to go man I'm between a two and a three I gave the last one I think I'm giving this one four really I don't know it's like I just feel like the colors are so pretty am I being tricked here is this a three I just have a hard time again we're all bringing our own experiences into this but like I remember growing up as a kid going to these art galleries where all these people would paint these Tigers very similarly like it looked like that it's like hyperreal paintings and they're always with the crazy colors and I don't know this just reminds me of a painting it just seems kind of dated to me is a good word it feels like it's like early 90s yeah I get it get I don't know if that's a depth the field thing I don't know if it's a cropping thing I don't know if it's just this type of tiger there's just something about it where I'm like H I don't know that this is that exciting of a shot I hate giving it did I give it a two or three I went three okay but it's it's just like the previous image where a a lot of work's probably gone into this but it just doesn't sit well with me this was taken by an new Raa and he says the morning Safari was turning into a wash out due to the rain we stopped to have tea and suddenly This Magnificent cat emerged from the undergrowth right next to us the only thing handy was a 500 mm lens almost too much lens for this encounter I wish he had said where he was well I mean I'm harsh on this so I just want to like if you took this on your Safari we we have like we have this lawyer friend of ours that always travels the world and we joke that his landscape and Wildlife portfolio is better than most photographers we know and yet he's just a lawyer who does it for fun um and he goes out there with the big lenses and everything if you've captured this on your trip like it's world class to you and you probably could put this in your den and it's like a great story and like I just think for like the commercial world or if you did this fulltime as a wildlife photographer like you probably maybe you mix this in with a bunch of your tiger shots and like it tells a story but it just doesn't feel like it's as strong as what I would expect from a full-time wildlife photographer making a living or trying to make a living doing this but if it's your trip and you got if I took a trip and got that picture I would be thrilled to death so I don't want it to feel like I gave this a three even though I kind of feel like it was a two 2.5 I just want to clarify that this is a great capture for Safari and for somebody that in in this but if this is your fulltime thing you hate it and they should delete it okay yeah cut it up all right last photo another hummingbird also with frozen Wings you want to talk about it or you want to rate it we've talked a lot and then rate it let's rate it first and then three two one I'm in between a three and a four I'm going to go four I'm going to go nice I love the tones of this I love the natural light feel of this it's it's like it's pulled out enough to where there's this there's this thing going on where you're taking these super telephoto shots and blurring the background into Oblivion and it starts to feel like this sterile image of a bird right we've all seen that this feels like the photographer was well enough verse to get the shot and you know experienced but because he's showing everything and you got the blurriness in the way far background but then you got the foreground and maybe there's something going on now that I look at look at a little more where like this one plant is a little sharper than maybe even the bird maybe that like pulls me out of it a little bit but I like seeing the natural environment again I don't know this is one that like you blow up on a poster even though I just gave it a four but it seems like a really nice pretty picture that the majority of people would really like yes um I think I think what's most impressive about this is that lighting coming through the feathers of the hummingbird capturing it sharp but but getting that backlight looks amazing now I feel like this could be processed a little better does this feel like a quarter stop underexposed to you I feel like I want brighter richer Greens in the background I just feel like this feels a little bit too raw to me and I want it I want it enhanced just a little bit I would probably raise the exposure a bit and then lower the highlights to retain that you know blown out area in the sky and the wings you want to keep that detail that looks perfect but everything else all the green areas to me just feel a little dark do you agree if you're scrolling through a feed maybe this does feel a little underexposed compared to what other images you'd be looking at but I kind of like it having this dark like very end of the day there's almost not enough light to even get this picture captured well that that is what's going on so this was taken by Carlos Milano and he said he was uh photographing hummingbirds at the Chicago Botanic Gardens his goal was to photograph uh the sunset light passing through the wings of a hummingbird as well as some of the environment around the bird he tried for many hours on multiple days before getting this image this was a single capture with minimal processing um it was shot with a Sony a73 a 200 to 600 mm lens at 411 mm f6.3 1 2500th of a second so I guess that answers my question on how fast the shutter speed needs to be to capture that ISO 8000 and then he used uh topaz to reduce noise in post well that wraps up this critique it is now time to choose the winners let's first choose third place and the winner of a tutorial from fstoppers.com store Patrick I'm going to give it to you the third place winner my third favorite image I'm going to go with the the geese okay I'm not upset about that you weren't going to pick that as two or one were you no no certainly not certainly Andy sure you want a free tutorial send me a private message on fstoppers.com and let me know which tutorial you want and I will get that sent over to you second place and the winner of $500 cash this is a hard decision what are you going to go with uh do do I get to choose I think you have to you put me in the hot seat I think I'm going to choose the lizard by Thomas and L um you have won $500 uh send me a private message on fstoppers and uh let me know how we can get you that cash and first place I'm going to speak for you Patrick I mean it was my highest rated image one of your highest rated images of the year yeah the dolphin by Nuno Alves you have won $1,000 cash you have to send me a private message on fstoppers and just to be clear i' I've WR WR this down everybody has to claim their prizes within 30 days we've had people like try to come 6 months later and like we just can't do that so you have to claim your prize send me a private message within 30 days and we will send you $11,000 and if you would like to be a part of the next critique head over to fstoppers.com contest you can see all of the submissions from this contest as well as our next architectural contest with Mike Kelly looking forward to that it's going to be fun are we going to do all three of us or is it just going to be probably for the sake of recording and micing and everything we'll probably just do two of us but we will do it in Whistler Canada see you guys next [Music] [Music] time
