The Kite boarding Pictures Competition produced once again some really good photos. I would like to give feedback as a non professional photographer with a passion for photography to all my fellow happy snappers out there.
I find that many of you take really good pictures and believe there is a need to discuss the need for editing a photo. Raw photo's are rarely found to be 100% perfect, and therefore editing is more often than not part of the art of taking the good shot.
I like to use Photoshop, but I found that
Picasa offer free easy to use software that provides excellent results too.
There are a few things that came out while I was trying to choose the best photo; the one is that some of the best pictures were over cropped. Most often cropping is necessary, but too much or too little can make or break the photo. The other thing that is important after taking the shot is to make sure your horizon (if there is one) is level. Often a level horizon is not the focus or aim of the outcome, but when it becomes part of the shot, please try to rotate your shot so that you have a level horizon on presentation.
Colour is also key to a good photo. By adjusting the colours of your photo's you can take a really average picture and make it awesome. Once you have edited your picture as best as you can, it could then probably also do with a little sharpening.
This is an example of a pic sent in that would have been considered in the top pics if it was edited slightly.
This is the same picture which I edited with the auto correct feature in photoshop and sharpened it a little.
I hope my comments are received in the light of helping you produce the better kiteboarding photo's for yourself in the future.
Some really nice photo’s were sent in and thank you to everyone for their contributions. I would like to first start by announcing the Nominees that did not get to win the prizes. Well done it was a hard task, and equally hard as many of them did not win because they are from the industry:
The overall best photograph including action, location, move, sharpness, colour, is the one of Brad from Downwindshuttle.com. Brad could not win the prize as he is a sponsor. The only crit I have on this pic is that it might have been cropped just a little too much, otherwise awesome shot. Well done Brad.
Time has now come to announce the winning photo's:The winner of a Progression Kiteboarding DVD goes to the Heckroodt family for submitting this awesome shot.
5 Downwind shuttle tokens go to the following 3 photo's:
The winner of a Snapshot DVD goes to Nico de Bruin for producing a really good composition photograph:
Well done again to all the winners!
Please email me direct, or via the
contact form, or via the forums to confirm with me how you would like me to get your prize to you, thank you.
Regards,
Juanita
www.iKiteboarding.com