Anyway, I couldn't let this opportunity go by without training my photography skills. I'm very curious how you judge my recent efforts. So, I'd like some critique; I have my little "black book" handy. this first pic I call "the classic"; a view on the gondolas from St-Marc's sq. About 8:30 AM, so the soft light made this a fairly easy photo to shoot. Not very original though (about 4.000.000.000 pics like these have been known to exist), but I had to have one.

... next one... well, I've been thinking about the contest this month. Thought this would be a nice idea to try out...

I particularly like this one; the sunlight on the leafs and the reflections in the water. This is autumn in Venice, folks !

Burano, a colourful island in the Laguna. Famous for its lace and fish... Every house painted in another crazy colour. I took about 50 pics there. Hard to choose the right one.

I'm particularly curious what you think of this one. Again, with the contest in mind, I took this pic. A kind of combination between the 17th century Venice and the 20th century industry surrounding it. I find it an intriguing pic, but what do you think ?

OK, that has to be all for now. I still have lots of pics to archive. These photo's were taken with my Minolta Dimage. No postprocessing (yet) in Photoshop besides resizing. I'd like your honest opinion, so don't spare me any criticism you may have. After all, I'm always eager to learn (and to please).

Ohhhh. I love the first on. Um critigue. I think it would look better as a larger pic and get rid of tyhe lamp in the middle of the gondolas. I think you may be able to crop off about a third of the left of the photo withought and increase the impact of the basilica in the background. But the water color is great!!!! I like the third and the fourth. Yes I agree that area is the most relaxed and compsy areas. Plut there are all of those nifty shops! The second pic I don't think od as a siloette. More of like a cutout HOWEVER the last one definitely qualifies. Perhaps you remove the scalfholding on the right. not sure what to add to the tower to give more impact maybe a lense flair. Good luck. Bsteph

Wow, great shots!
So here we go with the critic:

#1 Excellent, vivid colors, good composition, good lighting.
The horizon is a bit tilted, but this can be corrected easily in postwork.

#2 Good shot and a nice framing.

#3 Phantastic!!!!!!

#4 Great vivid colors again, nice peaceful mood, good framing.
The picture seems to lean a bit to the left and on my monitor
the right side seem to be a bit to dark.
But I don't trust my monitor anyway and on a print this shouldn't be
a problem at all.

#5 another great shot, aplies for the challenge IMO, but to be honest,
I agree with Bsteph, I miss a certain "umph" maybe try to add some
bells and whistles in PS?

My favourite is #3, technically perfect, nice peaceful atmosphere and a great
composition.
keep 'em comming and thanks for sharing

cheers
Thomas

I wrote a rather long critique of these WONDERFUL pictures, but it got lost in the upload. #3 is a Phantastic Photo, as zardoz points out. In #1, I think you can crop out some of the sky, but all-in-all a very nice shot, with wonderful colors. I played with #4 a little in Photoshop. [Hope you don't mind; certainly if you do I'll delete my experiments.] There are many wonderful colors hiding in there.

Just waiting to come out!

Same thing happened to me....nice long critiques on all of them and it all got lost....yikes! Anyway I think Zardoz critiques are pretty much on the money....you did an awesome job Peterke, and I think Misha did great work pulling the detail out of #4.

whaaa, sob, I wanna digi, I wanna go to Venice...these are gorgeous! Ditto Zardoz too. These just about knocked me outta my chair- I like Misha's first variation but then I'm a colorholic. :)

Thanks for your remarks... I guess I must be doing something good then. :-) I must admit that I spent a lot more time thinking about the shots (composition, manual operation of the camera, checking the results, ...) and it certainly paid off. I also see that the "RAW" quality setting is far superior to the JPEG-compression when the photo's come out of the camera (vivid colours, sharpness, detail, ...) So, I learned something, i think. bsteph, the "scaffolding" in the last pic is meant to be there; it's an old gas silo (or how do you call these things ?); I thougt it would be a nice contrasting feature (kind of "black lace"), but I saw another flaw : maybe the campanile is too centered in the composition. So, I'll play aroud a bit with this one. zardoz, I fully agree with all your remarks. I didn't want to touch the photos in PS before posting them here. I'll work on them some more and then I'll let you see the result. Misha, I like very much what you did to that photo. Very "artzy". I guess I'll have to install that old "Painter" program again and do some experimenting of my own. Very inspiring stuff !!!

KEWLNESS!!! My fave is the first one. I don't think I can add anything more to what's been said here except: I want that for my birthday, too!!! Oh, and kewl postwork, Misha. :-) (*

Beautiful shots Peter! I have to say 1, 3 & 4 are my favourites out of these. Totally awesome colour and the quality of light is wonderful too. I can't add anymore to what has already been said...except I want a Dimage too!! Misha, your adaption of No #4 is really cool! :-)>

I love the second shot! The last, I agree with the other comments. I would like the two structures as seperate images, they don't quite balance each other, at least at this angle. I do like the lacey look of the gas silo thingy

Now let me guess. A digi by any chance? Waiting for the load oh! number ones up LOL 4,000.000.000 and 1. But you can see why just a fantastic setting. From a pictorial point of view I would do a crop top RH corner just above the lamp this would give you the repeating pattern of the boats and a strong diagonal. Oh! Here is number two, nice one Peter love the way you have used the tree and the railings as a frame. Number three great too, you could try a tighter crop just above the second back lit branch just makes the picture a little tighter, the top is a little uninteresting. Not sure about number four can see the attraction of the colours but dont feel you have isolated them enough. I might have tried a low wide angle shot along the buildings on the RH side. My god theres more here is number five another nice shot again I would crop the LH side just to take the tower out of the centre and to make the picture tighter. As always only my first thoughts on viewing hope it helps. :O)