New Joiners - People #512

Lovely. A really intimate and intriguing portrait delicately exposed and composed. I like focus that forces us to engage with the front of the image that is additionally well exposed for highlights with ample consideration for shadow fall-off. The front lighting picks out skin detail nicely and is well balanced with the collar and hat that 'frame' the face. Finally that the background has dropped completely to black, beautifully isolates our gaze. Well done.

Nice. I really like how close this is. I like the exposure and I especially like the colour clash between the red and the blue. The flower being proffered is beautifully out of focus and that means we can explore the colour for colour's sake. It also means that we can be led into the boy's expression. Lovely and simple.

Often the difference between a good photograph and a great one is tiny and literally here with perhaps an inch - that is the case. This is a cracking shot - great energy, well exposed and full of (literal) potential. But it's the hands in front of the (slightly underexposed) sky which seem to blend in with the grey that brings this slightly down. A really fine effort but it's always a case of working out (very quickly on the practice swing) where every element is going to be harmoniously before we expose, that's the key. Very nice effort however.

This is a lovely frame. All the more pleasing as it exemplifies one of the golden rules of photography - timing. The graphic sense of the image is contoured by the street markings and the figures - all clearly delineated - are set on a dynamic canvas that is an ordinary road... but it's that ordinariness and the unusual angle of the photograph that elevates this and says much about contemporary life whether in India or anywhere. Well done.

An engaging image, decently exposed - but I wonder how it might have been improved given that the event would be over so quickly. A good deal of photography is working out what will happen and how best to place yourself to capture it. Here, there's a good deal of extraneous detail - the crowd and the houses and the poles that detract. If the photographer was a bit lower, as well as making a more dramatic image, he/she would have been able to control, to a degree, what the background showed. Still, a good effort.

There's a great deal of potential for the eye here but, as it stands, I'm a little unsure what I'm looking at. One of the key things I think to making images is to visually arrange a scene so that it makes some kind of aesthetic sense. Here the obvious focus would be the guitarist. To make him the centre of attention, I'd like to see you cover some kind of intimate space between you. The child's gaze is certainly interesting but because of the physical distance between them and the distracting background, that works less well. Well done for seeing but push on and decide what it is you actually want the photograph to tell.

Good effort: decent panning technique combined with a high shutter speed has rendered the rider (almost) sharp. This takes practice so keep going. However, the exposure's a bit off: the highlights are blowing so take care when metering and choose where you shoot from - although the background is, at f5 - somewhat blurred, the pole is a bit distracting. The best sports shooters will, when possible consider not only the action but where they are shooting into and try and make that as harmonious as possible so as not to deflect attention from the main subject. Keep pushing.

This was a really good idea - but even for the best of us, sometimes really good ideas don't work out. The view through the drum is excellent and well spotted but the background is quite distracting and ultimately I'm a little unsure of what I'm looking at. Perhaps a tighter framing around the nearest drum - being brave and getting much closer - might have made a more impactual image. Still a very interesting effort.

This is a potentially lovely image that seems to capture both character and a fleeting moment. That said a great photograph balances the interaction between foreground and background dictating what the viewer is being asked to consider. Here, the wall and the receding hills draw our attention away. A higher (or perhaps lower) angle from the photographer - or a tighter framing might have made this a much more impactual image.

This is a lovely moment but such moments are felting and we have to make an impactual image quickly. This is likely to have a sentimental meaning for the photographer but as a photograph the frame is constricted - the first figure is bursting out of it and I'd have liked to see a framing that captures his whole figure. More the child, frame right, is partly obscured. There IS a picture waiting here and that is one that is harmoniously balanced between the three figures and one that gives them aesthetic space to breathe. Nearly - keep pushing.

Sometimes our framing decisions are about how we hold the camera - landscape or portrait and here I think it might have been fortuitous to have included the full range of the dancer and her arms. I like the large(ish) aperture the focuses on the figure and (partly) obscures the background; I like the sharp focus and I like the exposure - but the balance of the frame feels a bit off. Well seen however.

There's certainly something about this that's striking but it's curiously unconnected emotionally... and I think that that's because it looks like a snapshot. I like the movement of it and I don't even mind the exposure but the angle is so extreme, it feels like a crop. I'm unsure whether there was any interaction (how did you know he was homeless?) and sometimes that can work well - but sometimes it's better to let the subject speak visually without imposing a (literal) frame that says something more about the photographer than about what the image is trying to describe. That said, I do like the effort.

This is a very impactual image. I like that there's intimacy between the subject and the photographer and I like that one gets a sense of character from this. I can see that the chosen aperture has allowed us to concentrate on the face and that the harsh highlights have been largely excluded by framing. However the interior of the cab is distracting - especially the orange in the windscreen. A tighter crop - perhaps as a portrait frame might have made this even better.

This is lovely - a genuine moment captured spontaneously. I really like the laugh and the instantaneity of the image but even when we have a fraction of a second we must be thinking about framing. The line of the boat (?) across the bottom of the frame is great and it gives an interesting shape to the whole picture but a step backwards might have captured the woman's whole arm which I think might have made a more natural composition. That said, nicely done.

Simple, straightforward and nicely done. With just a tiny adjustment this would be a cracker - and it's about where we stand when we press the shutter. The subject is happy and relaxed and he's imaged in front of a reasonably harmonious, plain background. A step a few inches to the left and a little bit down would have meant that there's no pillar coming out of his head and the sightly distracting top of the wall (and beams) would have been excluded. It's just a matter of practice but these simple rules mean that the image is easier to read and flows better. Still, this is still an engaging and compelling image. Well done.