For the last few days I’ve been working on my application for the Glimpse Correspondent Program. I’ve gone through all of my old photos, picked out my favorites, and touched them up. I now have a total of thirty-three pictures. The problem is, I need to narrow my submission down to twenty. If you have a minute, it would be a great help if you could look through the photos and leave a comment telling me which photos you think I should keep, and which I should trash, and why.
Don’t worry about my feelings. Be ruthless. Telling me which ones you hate will help more than telling me which ones you like. But, of course, I hope you like them all.
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definately keep in
-expats on the beach (but maybe tone down the lighting, it almost looks baroque, but its maybe the best photo)
-lanterns
-fireworks
-taking photos of the burning heap,
-cambodian girl
-burning boat
the rest are good as well, but themes seem a little less original than the ones i reccommend
Awesome, thanks Ben!
Hey Matt,
I love them all but the ones with the aster-ex beside them are definitely my fav!
-Mayan Canoe *
-Photographers
-Typhoon Girl*
-Broken Trees*
-Fireworks
-Expats***
-Guatemalan Boy
-Chinese lanterns*
-Burning Boat 1&2
-Shipwreck
-Guatemalan Boater**
-Guatemalan Textiles
-The Getty
-Whale shark
-Cambodian Girl**
-Night Boat
-Postcard Sunset
-Fish
-Paraglider (I liked both)
Hope that helps! We will see you this summer when you come home…
Take care,
Raqs
Awesome. That helps a lot. Thanks Raquel! I’ll see you when I come home this summer, around July 6th or so.
Burning Boat1
Paraglider1
Guatemalan Boy-like the symmetry
Night Boat
Cambodian Boy
Typehoon Girl
Cambodian Girl-this one could be from 40 years ago during the VN war
Guatemalan Textiles-to me, a microcosim of what it looks like when you look at this culture, very hot and colorful and full of pattern
Broken Trees-this one invokes sadness!
Expats
Mayan Canoe-love the combination of different textures
Photographers-probably the most intersting as it is a unique perspective of the event
Fish
Chinese Lanters-love it!
Postcard Sunset
Matt,
My two cents. In descending order.
1. Cambodian Girl-stunning. She’s leaning on that barbed wire. I want to know the story.
2. Filipino Boy-perfect! Very much your style (I think anyway).
3. Expats-I’ve always like this one. A touch oversaturated on right side.
4. Sunset Guitarist-nice, natural, clean, But either re-edit the sky in bottom right corner or just crop it out.
5. Creepy Idol 2-funky.
6. Guatemalan Textiles-Nice colors, nice depth of field.
7. Shipwreck-saturation highlights in bottom left corner could be toned down. This photo doesn’t really need so much saturation, it’s strong enough on it’s own. Perhaps crop a little tighter. lose some beach and cut out boat on right. It would make the boy a little bigger and that stick could lead to him.
8. Girl in Cave-lovely. Moody and mysterious.
9. Punk GuitaristGuatemalan Boy
10.Cambodian Boy
11.Typhoon Girl-you sure get nice poses on your people shots.
12.Punk Guitarist
13.Boat Boy-A little overworked near his left arm, letting the boy go a lot darker wouldn’t hurt the photo.
14.Paraglider 2
15.The Getty
16.Yenshui Fireworks Festival-but I think you have better one’s of the boat burning (that nice pre-fire, smoky blue, pinky, purple one) that could take this one’s place for a nice festival pic.
17.Broken Trees
18.Mayan Canoe
19.Chinese Lanterns
20.Photographers
They are all awesome, but your people shots are easily the best in my books. You catch nice moods, expressions and postures. Good luck.
That’s by far the most useful reply I’ve received. Thanks a lot Rich!
Hey Matt!
Just wanted to say I discovered you site(s) yesterday and I’ve been addicted ever since. It’s really inspired me a lot, especially as I’ve just recently entered the ‘travel bloggers’ world, and am also working my way over to Taiwan. I can’t wait to try kiteboarding! Anyways, all these pictures are cool but I especially like these:
1) Cambodia Girl, the barbed wire is really cool
2) Expats, amazing colors!
3) Sunset Guitarist (I’m a sucker for music and sunsets, and the lighting is wicked in that shot)
4) Night Boat, again the colors draw people right in
5) Punk Guitarist, it’s just cool, I don’t know why
6) Creepy Idol, Sweet use of negative space, plus its super creepy
7) Shipwreck, cuz how often do you get to see sun rays like that?
8) Typhoon girl, again the colors. Did you alter that at all? It might have been a bit grainy, but probably its just my tiny netbook screen.
Sweet shots dude! What kind of camera do you shoot with? I’ve just got a little Panasonic point-and-shoot that I’ve managed to capture lots of sweet stuff with, but it’s still a bit limited. Does a serious blogger need a serious camera? Thanks for any tips! Good Luck with your submission!
Hey Mike,
Thanks for the compliment! I’m glad you like it. I really haven’t been posting enough lately, though. I’ve got to tray and do that more.
I shoot with a Nikon D80 (DSLR) right now, but I’m looking to upgrade soon. I also want to get a good waterproof point and shoot too.
Most bloggers don’t shoot with DSLR’s like me. They’re big and bulky and take a while to learn how to use. I think most guys out there use a good point and shoot. There are lots of good ones. A lot of pros carry a Cannon Powershot G10 as a backup.
Two things I personally want in my point-and-shoot camera (in addition to good quality) are waterproofing and HDR video. People love video on the web. I really want to start using it more on my blog. And waterproofing allows you to shoot under any conditions, and, obviously, in the water (snorkeling, surfing, etc.)
What’s your blog Mike? I’d love to take a look.
Matt,
My blog is http://thenoseatbelttour.wordpress.com/. I just started it a month ago and, after hours of wondering why plugins don’t work, I finally realized wordpress.com and wordpress.org are completely different things. So I’m in the process of transferring everything to a private host and jumping on the .org bandwagon. The only thing holding me back at the moment is time as I’m a volunteer teacher/rec director/music leader at a summer camp in Inner Mongolia. Quite busy, but I’m really loving blogging so far, and Inner Mongolia. The other main thing is choosing a domain name. So hard to decide! After finding out I need to host privately, I wanted to do http://www.noseatbelt.com but a colleague here told me about words making other words, as in ‘no seatbelt’ and ‘nose at belt,’ which could be confusing, so that’s out the window. It’s funny, I often use the name ‘Mike the nomad’ as a user name, so when I ran across your site, I had to toss that idea out too! haha. But I’ve heard choosing a good catchy, easy to remember domain name is important, so that’s my goal this week. Pick something and go with it. I also remember reading somewhere on your site about finding a niche and focusing on that, and I know my passions in life are my faith, and my love for the outdoors, so I know I want to go from that angle. I feel like once I hop on wp.org, I’m gonna have my hands full in the beginning, so many options. I’m going to have to start taking more videos too, thanks for the tip. I never really thought about it, but then realized my own fascination with youtube and other online videos is likely shared with millions of others. After the summer I’m hoping to teach in the fall, so then I’ll have more time to focus on the blog, building up traffic, adding photography, and site design. The bummer about China now is the ban of FB among other things, so posting new blog posts there is going to have to wait till the fall.
I’ll keep reading your site for more tips!! I should have a few days free time coming up, so I’m going to put in some hours transferring and setting up my new and improved blog. Thanks for the camera advice too. My little bro has a Canon G9, and takes some really amazing shots. And there’s a girl here who has a Nikon DSLR as well, and I really like shooting with it. It can do so many things! I definitely need to think about video, my little camera just doesn’t have great video capability. I haven’t looked at cameras for awhile, but it seemed to me the waterproof choices were rather limited. Let me know if you find a good one. Anyways, if you get a chance to read my blog, I’d sure appreciate some constructive criticism! I love writing but never studied it. I might take some courses about creative writing, as I really enjoy it. I have trouble keeping my tenses consistent, so I need to work on that, but I’ll take any pro-bono writing advice! Shoot me an email if you like. Take it easy! Thanks and talk to you later!