Dom Bower's Photography Critiqued by you!

Ok it may be unfair that I have been the one giving all the advice on others photos that they have sent in.  So I have decided to level up the playing field, I have submitted my fav 5 photos (that I could find on this computer)…(oh look at me giving excuses already!)  for you to critique.  I would really appreciate it if you would do a video critique of my shots and explain what you think is good or bad and also how YOU think I could improve or what I should do differently if I were to do the shoot again!

All reply videos will be posted below.

To get the photos you will need the free file sharing thingy called Dropbox

You can get the link for that by clicking on this  http://db.tt/W88s4mP

then you can get my photos (fairly small size) by clicking here

https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/10504939/1/doms%20photos%20for%20critique?h=a3409d

Fingers crossed that link works.

"I give you all the permission to use my photos for your photography critique on youtube or your blog as long as you mention that they are photos by Dom Bower."  Please critique the photography not the models, if you critique my models, in a non constructive way, I delete your replies!

first video up already!


  

Second video up now

Getting There with Photography by Dom Bower

Make Your Own Book

Sponsors...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

contact lenses

contact lenses, a photo by FISHNROBO on Flickr.

this guy should have gone to spec savers!

Nikon D700 Prices !

What the hell!

A Nikon D700
 (the full frame camera in the body like the D300) is now fetching prices of £1900!!! (new)
Lets see what amazon gives us here

ooh ouch saying £1850 just now.

This is over 200-300 pounds more than what it was when it first came out!!!

People are now selling their Nikon D700
s for the same price as they bought them 3 years ago!  how mental is that!

What the reason

2 things

The exchange rate with japan sucks

and

the earthquake crisis in japan has screwed up the supply, now very few shops are getting any D700 bodies and as demand is still around the same they are now putting up the prices.

So makes you have to think.

If you buy a quality dslr (not an amateur or even prosumer)  you could have potentially used it for 3 years and sell it for say £100 less than what you bought it for.   Kinda makes the idea of renting equipment a bit of a waste of time.

I have a wedding coming up this friday and I was going to be renting the Nikon D700
 for the day, but for me to pick it up on the Friday morning, I would have to return it at 5pm that day otherwise I would have it for the weekend as the shop would be closed and I would in turn get charged for 2 days.  

1 day rental is around £90 from Calumet (along with having to stump up the £1900 deposit)  and for two days it was going to be around £170, (tiny discount).  Now if you are shooting a wedding for a mate and you have given mates rates of £500 (not including album design or supply) then that is a big whack out of any profit you may have been made. In the end after travel, taxes, parking, food, and insurance, you are looking at a Mates rate wedding getting you only about £200, for 10 hours shooting(and travel) and 20 hours editing (and delivery).  Thats back go minimum wage.

Now you know why photographers cost £1000+ per shoot. And remember the photos are the one thing you can really keep from your wedding, flowers, dresses, cakes, lighting, bands, hotels, honeymoon etc all disappear and photos are the keepers.

So the question is what do you do

do you buy a second hand D700 which is almost the same price as what it was when it first came out

or do you buy a new nikon D700 which will cost you around 300more than what it was when it first came out and then try and sell it once the upgrade nikon D800 comes out later this year (December 2011 abouts) 

Me?

Well I have opted for buying a second hand Nikon D700
. I have managed to get one for £1500 and then postage from a camera company in London. Chesick camera company  http://chiswickcameras.co.uk/

and Fingers crossed it gets here on Tuesday so I have a chance to test it out before the wedding on Friday.

I have no idea how many "actuations" it has, but I really don't care. My Nikon D300 has shot over 80,000 shots and is going strong. That roughly works out to  100 photos every single day I have owned it.   Which of course I have not done that but some days I have shot 1000, and a wedding could easily be 2000 photos in a single day (depending on number of guests and size of event) 

At the wedding I will still be taking my older camera as back up  the Fuji s5pro, as although the ISO is shockingly low compared to the Nikon D700  its dynamic range is still amazing and trumps all but the NIkon D3x

So my advice,  if you see an amazing camera for a good price buy it, as it may in the end cost you almost nothing for using it a number of years!  save the money, Dont rent unless you have to.










Link to Getting There with Photography: By Dom Bower

Getting There ...

By Dom Bower

Book Preview

HDR editing tips

This page I shall be adding all the videos I have made regarding HDR photography and HDR photo editing. The one at the top is the most recent
More after the break

take a photo which is over exposed by 2 stops

take a photos whick is under exposed by 2 stops

this phot is the photo in the middle range

then edit them in photomatix to get an hdr photo like this below

Gozilla's dead baby

Even when i find something dead I can still let you know a little photography secret!  The secret here is that even if you dont have an adaptor, you can still put a nikon lens on a canon camera. You just have to hold it on. This makes focusing very difficult if you are using a macro of course.

Slow mo water bombs!

A little relaxing time from photo critiques!

Click more for more

NIkon film competition And Moby Music competition

Nikon is holding a short film competition

check out the link  http://www.nikonfilmfestival.be/nl/home/

The website is all in german or something (not English)



Makes me wonder about making a video for it!

If you cant watch the video above, the rules are it should be no more than 200 seconds, (thats 3minutes 20 seconds)
And is only for Europeans… for some reason…


On Vimeo!
There is also a competition to make a music video for Moby
something around the concept of  the words Hello Future

they have given you 3 songs to get your teeth into,

My fav song is the one called "AFTER"

check this link for the details

http://vimeo.com/saatchiandsaatchi



here is what one person has put together, kinda very cool

The Freaky Brides

Check out the pages of the freaky brides

http://www.myspace.com/thefreakybrides
and the confusion is sex facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=72774457720

Photo Portfolio critique Page 21-30

Rules have slightly changed now,  as all the photos that people were sending in were huge, and the time it was taking to upload them to this page and its now costing me for server space, please send in your photos so that they are no more than 1mb per photo (smaller is preferred) Make sure they are named and also put your name at the start of each photo.

Normal Rules for submitting your portfolio

1) no more than 5 of your best photos (no more than 1mb per photo)

2) all photos must have names (and your name at the start)

3) Describe what the photo is

4) why you think it is good

5)In your email you must state "I hereby give Dom Bower the rights to replicate my images in his youtube channels and his blog, I also appreciate if Dom is as harsh as he likes on my Images"

6) send them to dombower@hotmail.com

(at the moment there are 58 emails waiting to be opened, you may not be replied to for over a month.)

"I do not look at the images before i record, all reactions are genuine and truthful. Where I give harsh critique I try to support with advice and direction."

Ok lets start of with a Good one!

Photo Critique 21  Michael Romero

More after the break