Here are some pics my wife shot at the Obama Rally in St. Louis. She is not a trained photographer. She shot these with the Rebel XT, 18-55 kit lens and 75-300 4-5.6 III non IS. She even had the aperture as low as f45 some times lol. From what I could tell, it looked like she had the camera on A-dep for a lot of the day but still managed to luck up on some shots. I did some processing on these but not a lot.
So I got her permission to post these here and I just wanted to know what everyone thought about how she did covering the event as a amatuer photojournalist.
Please do not turn this into a political debate. That is not why I'm posting this.
From a photojournalistic viewpoint, I think they're outstanding pics. The Saved.com pic is a little OOF...my favorite is #12 with the security detail on the roof in sillouhette.
Yah I realize the save.com pic is OOF, but I still felt it had a nice pj quality to it still as it showed some of the other types of people that were there. There were some anti-abortion people who had some signs with really graphic images on them. She stayed away from them though since she had our kids with her.
in my opinion, #9 is very strong and powerful photography. very well captured, great composition, probably the best shot for me I have seen from US elections. #10 is interesting too.
I don't think these are very good, lots of chopped heads, focus problems, images that have nothing to do with people? I'm not seeing a theme either. May be good for your scrap book, but don't understand why you posted them here
Ed Peters wrote:
I don't think these are very good, lots of chopped heads, focus problems, images that have nothing to do with people? I'm not seeing a theme either. May be good for your scrap book, but don't understand why you posted them here
Images that have nothing to do with people? Every image has people in them. And maybe you should stop and read the original post again because I think I did a fair job explaining why I posted the images here. Or maybe its just to early in the morning for you and you need your Wheaties and Coffee.
The theme I see here is I think she did a reasonably decent job documenting the rally and showing all the different types of people who make up this country. Especially for someone who didn't know that the 18-55 zoomed. lol.
Ed Peters wrote:
I don't think these are very good, lots of chopped heads....
What's wrong with chopped heads? This was shot by James Nachtwey, arguably the greatest war photographer of all time.
Ed Peters wrote:
I don't think these are very good,...focus problems...
Seems like the focus was missed on this shot too, and this was shot by one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century.
My point behind posting these was not to start a war, but to show the the technical side of photography is not the only criteria to judge a photograph on. If that was the case, we would all be missing out on a lot of great photos.
Personally I enjoyed the photos of the Obama rally, and the photo of the people watching on the elevated platform works well within the context of the other images you posted.
I'd say for a non-photog, she did a damn good job, she's probably been watching your work and picked up ideas along the way, my girlfriend is the same way, she doesn't shoot much but when she does she surprises me ;-)
Nice set, good job, the rally looked pretty well attended.
Viewing a set of photos is refreshing because its a reminder of why most of us first picked up a camera: to record and freeze those slices of life that resonate with us. The more skilled we get at the craft aspects the more we tend to self-edit what we shoot based on technical considerations.
