Sport Relief MK

AndMan

Some from yesterday's Sport Relief charity event in Milton Keynes.
The first digit of the participant's number indicates how many miles they are "running" (1, 3 or 6).

C&C always welcome.

#1 Cool dudes don't have a cow.


#2 Entering the home straight


#3 Anyone for tea?


#4 OMG Robin is a girl!


#5 Hey Ma, we're famous


#6


#7 Redheads


Lastly one of may favourites from the day as "Pucky" the MK Lightening's mascot takes time out from running to jam with the jazz band entertaining spectators.
#8


Thanks for looking

johng

Since you asked for C&C, I'll provide some. Also of note - my C&C is a bit tougher than a casual photographer because you're running a pro site and selling these images for profit. And, you've posted them in a sports forum to boot, so I'm critiquing them as sports shots as well.

In general there are two major issues with most of these photos:
1) poor framing
2) too many distracting elements.

Specifically:
shot1: which is the subject - the mascot or the woman? They aren't competing with one another so you don't get the benefit of the concept of competition you get when showing 2 runners. Plus they are at the extreme edges of the frame with a lot of dead space in between. Additionally the feet are cut off the cow. So that's an awkward crop.

shot 2: GREAT subject - best of the bunch. But it appears the focus may be on the very distracting man behind them drinking water. That guy drinking water right between the two of them kind of ruins the shot. The mis focus is another issue. In general there's simply too much DOF in this shot - too much of the distracting background and guy with bottle.

shot 3: Again framing and distracting elements. The guy at the right of the frame really distracts. He's running and they're not - my suggestion would be to wait for him to get past before taking the shot. Or taking it sooner before his body started to pass the other two. That would allow you to crop him out without cropping out part of their bodies. I would prefer a little tighter and the face of the one woman better exposed. Faces are very important - whenever possible they should be exposed properly and should be an important part of the photo.

shot 4: again you've got a distracting person filling up the right side of the frame. Time your shots so they're past him and you can crop him out. The trees and people in the background are distracting as well - you need a shallower depth-of-field to help eliminate that distraction.

shot 5: Competing subjects. Is the subject the band or the kids? The kids are a bit out of focus which makes it easier to focus on the band in the background. And then there's the partial body of the runner in front distracting from either subject. If the subject is the two kids, you've cut off part of the hand on the boy.

shot 6: I like the concept of this shot very much. It had a lot of potential. But you've cut off all the feet and have a lot of sky at the top - in other words the shot was framed too high - you want the feet in and less of the sky.

shot 7: The selective color is an interesting idea. But again you've got too much distraction. If your subject is them then you don't want the band playing such a large portion of the frame. Again a lot of DOF here which bring in those distracting background elements.

shot 8: The problem here is the partial player at the right of the frame. If he were fully in the shot this would be a nice shot of the band. No competing subjects and the background isn't too distracting. But cutting a band member in half kind of ruins it for me.

Since you have a professional site and are selling for profit I would suggest you should strongly consider doing some more practice and improving your shot taking. IMO the quality needs to go quite a bit up before you start selling. I know that sounds harsh. But it's very difficult to recover from first impressions. And if potential customers see a work product that isn't worth buying it's not likely they'll come back again.

AndMan

John

Thank you for taking the time & effort to provide a detailed critique, I very much appreciate it.