Hope in Doubt

Hello! You’ve requested advanced critique, and that’s why I’m here.

Firstly congrats. I think this is a really great capture. One of the things that make this photo so great is that it takes a person somewhere. It takes a person out of their little office cubicle and makes a person realize that there is more to life than just our little comfort zones that we life in.

When looking at this image, my mind wanders and I think of Africa and whether this woman is still alive.

Secondly this is also such a great picture of hope in Christ. Even though someone is dying of a dreaded virus, that person has the great and glorious hope of eternal life. Awesome!

OK, so lets start. Firstly, the image does seem slightly dark. Because of her dark skin, quite a bit of detail gets lost. This can be prevented using a slower shutter speed, or changing the aperture. (I know you probably already know this, but I’m just being thorough – and a person never knows, someone else might read the crit and learn something new ) Remember that when using slower shutter speeds a person is more prone to get camera shake. Using a tripod is advised.

Overall the composition is strong. One thing that does bother me a little is the intense light in the right hand corner. I guess it could be interpreted as a symbol of hope. But overall it does feel like it detracts from the woman’s face, which should be the main focus point. This problem can be resolved by doing a tighter crop, which could also help a person to focus on the woman’s face more. The only negative thing about a tighter crop would be that a person would lose some of those awesome cattle skin detail in the left hand corner. The cattle skin really does help to set the tone of the shot. So it really is a toss up to which is the best route to take.

When looking at the image full size, the image does seem to get a bit pixilated in certain areas – especially the hands. I’m assuming that it doesn’t look that way on the original shot, so the problem probably lies with the compression of the jpeg or the scanner. If you’re saving the image as 72dpi (dots per inch) then make sure that the compression of the jpeg is set on “high quality”, If this doesn’t help, try saving it with a higher dpi – like 150dpi – and then lowering the compression quality of the jpeg to say 7 or medium.

That’s it from me. Great work. God bless. Thanks for taking me into Africa!