Photography forum image of the month – July 2013

Hi Photo lovers!

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Just so it’s clear, the photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo contests.

My goal is to sim­ply choose an excel­lent photo and talk about why I think it rocks. This month was another crazy hard month though as the nom­i­na­tions from dif­fer­ent gen­res were of very high quality.

This month’s choice goes to Hill­bil­ly­girl  is for cap­tur­ing Air Time .

Air Time by Hillbillygirl

I chose this image for a few reasons:

1 –Deci­sive moment and tim­ing — The moment cap­tured is very excit­ing! The wake­boarder is par­al­lel with the water and yet he looks per­fectly calm and con­cen­trated even though he is fly­ing through the air.

2– Com­po­si­tion — I really like the fram­ing here. The frozen wave at the bot­tom, the spray com­ing off the wake­board at top left, the line pulling the wake­boarder at right — it’s all work­ing well. I like that the back­ground has gone medium soft which high­lights the wake­boarder so nice aper­ture choice as well.

3 — Sharp­ness and high shut­ter speed — I really like that the eyes are nice and sharp. It’s a tes­ta­ment to good track­ing skills and the use of an appro­pri­ately high shut­ter speed to nail this scene. The eyes are sharp enough to see and feel the con­cen­tra­tion. The whole body ges­ture is won­der­fully frozen.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats Hill­bil­ly­girl on this excit­ing capture!