Help me make a cut!

[Brammers]

I find it so hard cutting down my own shots. This lot have to go into an album - there's not room for all of them! What makes it trickier is that none of these are particularly stunning shots, they're all ok but nothing great which jumps up and bites me. Can you please deal with my sentimentality, and help me by listing, for each set, which you'd choose, or none of them, and why!

Cheers

Set 1:

1

1b

2

Set 2:

3

4

5

Set 3:

6

7

8

Set 4:

9

10

11

I've got about 5 more sets that I need to make a decision on, I'll get them up when I've had some feedback on these

Cheers all!

[Liquid101]

2 4 6 and 10 for me.

2 is much nicer, better shadow, the extra foreground detail.

4 is simple, no distracting people

6 gives a better feel for the overall scene

10 is just a nicer composition of the scene

[allymac123]

Set 1:

I prefer the womans stance in #1 but I don't get the bottom half of the picure being black. What purpose does it serve. I'd personally chop it off but otherwise go for #2 as it has the arrow there and an all round better exposure.

Set 2:
#1 for me: I like the interaction of all the people doing different things and also the the converging lines. #3 loses the sense of convergance and also the lovely leaves and sky

Set 3
Either#13 or #3. I see issues which need to be addressed with each though: The blown out sky in #1 (can you rescue the detail from the RAW file?)
#3 - The blown out bits of the rocks. (A bit of curves should sort that out). I also think it needs a tad more saturation. BTW on all these shots I think its a shame you chose to freeze the water as appose to stopping down to get the longest shutter speed you could handhold (I presume you had no tripod).

Set 4:
Either #2 or #3. If you could pull out the sky detail in #3 from the RAW then that would probably be my fav.

[Liquid101]

Originally Posted by allymac123

Set 1:

I prefer the womans stance in #1 but I don't get the bottom half of the picure being black. What purpose does it serve. I'd personally chop it off but otherwise go for #2 as it has the arrow there and an all round better exposure.

Actually, looking at it again, you're right the stance and shadow is much nicer in the first.

[Brammers]

Those water shots are some of my very first DSLR shots ally, I didn't choose not to freeze, rather I didn't know what I was doing :P The original is 1209.jpg, first run through the filenames! Bit of nostalgia there. Nowdays I'd use AS to drop to about 1/3s or look for a rock. I tend not to carry a tripod around while backpacking or sightseeing, although that might change in the future.

In Set 3 the sky is well and truly blown I'm afraid, a 4stop underexposure from RAW only saves a bit of it. The rocks are also very hard to tone down - the brightest parts are blown and large areas still appear correctly exposed with -4EV. I think I'll go for 6 - it's not a killer shot and I can cope with a few pics in an album having flaws just so I get a thorough inclusion of the memories.

In Set 4 there is no sky detail - it's a featureless haze. I could photoshop one in I guess :E I think I'm with liquid here.

#1 & #2 I'll have another look at. Quite an interesting subject - that's a girl revising in a Chinese uni. Lights go out at 9pm so lots and lots of students gather outside and study by streetlights.

Interesting that you differ on Set 2 - I can't choose between 3 & 4 either. Might just put both in

[Brammers]

How about this for set 1? I've edited the original post to include it, and put it alongside the original here: