Published by Yvette Depaepe in collaboration with Mike Kreiten, Head of the Senior Critics

1x has a unique feature the founders are very proud of: the photo critique. Members can submit pictures to a team of knowledgeable senior critics. Their feedback and different suggestions are useful, interesting and enriching even for the best of us.

Critique on 'The Rover' by Ibrahim Nabeel 

I would love to have some suggestions to improve this picture.
The human element was added to the original photo and I painted some of the squares in black!  It would be great if you could share ideas to make a better composition or to change colours.  Thanks to all!
 

                                     BEFORE                                                                     AFTER 

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Senior Critic Theo Luycx 

This is an easy image for changing with creative edit. I will tell what I should do. Of course it is my personal vision but I think it should result in a much better composition.

Go in Photoshop and click on IMAGE>DUPLICATE to have a second image to use with the first one.

Than clean the first one. Make a duplicate layer and go to EDIT>TRANSFORM >SCALE and pull till you have three rows vertical. Clean this whole image as follows. Select a yellow rectangle and go to EDIT>COPY>PASTE bring this yellow rectangle to a black rectangle. You can do this two times what remains is only the person and the lantern.

Make one layer and remove both. You can do this by cloning or chose a total yellow row and use again EDIT>COPY >PASTE and bring this row to the right. Now all is clean go to your second copy.

Select the black person and do again COPY/PASTE you can bring this copy to the middle yellow rectangle below. Select now the lantern precisely or with a rectangle and the yellow. Bring the lantern on the black line on 2/3 from the left.

Now you have a simple composition. Of course you can follow your own taste where you want to place the lantern and man.

Up to you ….

Another suggestion to keep it simple is simply removing the two black rectangles.
Less is more.

Ibrahim Nabeel 
Thanks a lot, Mr Theo.  I'm very happy with your excellent suggestions.  I appreciate it a lot.
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Senior Critic Norman Gabitzsch 
You made an outstanding simple, elegant photograph. The Yellow and black are giving a strong clean contrast. The grey light pole adds a third element of colour which support the modern presentation. It is most appealing!

Theo has made some excellent suggestions. The man and the pole on the far right puts this composition out of balance (too much weight on the right). Moving the man and the pole will give the composition more balance, but exactly where you put them is critical. I agree with Theo about the man's placement. The pole, I would consider moving to the centre on the right side rectangles (although this suggestion might generate some debate).

Finally, I would consider making the vertical rectangles on the far left wider... maybe making them half the width of the rectangles to the right. You can then come back and stretch the new canvas to the format of your choice.

This is an example of elegant minimization. I really like it!

Ibrahim Nabeel 
Many thanks, Norman.
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Mike Kreiten  
Here we see the more people you ask, the more opinions you usually get...

I actually like the imperfection of your tile framing. I also like the black blocks leading to your silhouette. The only thing I would change, and that's a matter of preferences is the lamp post. Your photo will be even more unbalanced, but do we need to balance things always?

I cloned it away, really a easy task in this, and I cropped away 8% of the right side, to "incomplete" the most right for roughly the amount the left tiles have. It improved the diagonal of blocks and man in my view.
Maybe I made you curious to try it?

Ibrahim Nabeel 
Thank you very much for your time and reaction, Mr Mike Kreiten.  And yes, it intrigues me.  I will see what I can do now after the excellent critiques.  It opens up new horizons for action to me.
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FINAL RESULT AND PUBLISHED IMAGE

'The Rover' by Ibrahim Nabeel

Critique is also open to all members, and we learn together here. If you see an image you'd like to comment on, your words would be welcome.