Another photo that I took a while ago, must have been in the winter or fall because one of my friends was wearing a jacket in the uncropped version.
Cropping, gradient map, border.
(The thin line around the image is to separate the border from the white bg when you view it as an attachment.)

Attached Images

Bikes copy.jpg (342.9 KB, 32 views)

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how do you make your photos seem so crisp? I really like that.

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ARTIFICIALWINGS

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Love it, no grain at all, awesome job.

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Thanks guys!
As for the grain, I scanned a print of the same photo. I scanned at about 50% original size (two photos at a time, so the scanned document ends up about 6 inches in height for two 5x7 inch prints). After that, the photo will be much larger than anyone's monitor resolution, so you just downsize it in Photoshop or whatever.
Oh, I also scanned at I think it was 300dpi.
The other factor I think of when controlling the grain is, in this instance, the film, how it was developed, and what size photo was printed from the film. It was 400 ISO film, so the grain is not too big (higher ISO = larger grain due to silver structures that make up the film's light-sensitive properties), and the print size was big enough to show detail, but small enough to show very little or no grain at all. Again, a 5x7 inch print.

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I was wondering if we'd ever get to see any of your photos. It looks pretty good, but..

tell me: how does one go about critiquing photographs? I mean, I'd feel kind of lame complimenting the colors and shit because I don't know to what extent you have control over it. Like, camera angles, DOF...? I'm a photography noob. Help me out a bit and I'll try to give you a more intelligent critique.

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Good question! I'm also a photo noob (lack experience because I've only taken a class for one school year...).
I had to get out my notes to make sure this is right.
There are 3 questions to ask when critiquing, and 4 standards to observe. The questions are:
1) What's good about it?
2) What's not so good about it?
3) How could it be better?
The standards are:
1)Composition
2)Clarity (but not necessarily whether the subject is in focus or not... this is more relating to the meaning of the photo (For instance: I could argue that this is somewhat of a self-portrait or auto-biography)
3)Value (lighting, contrast, print quality, those kinds of things)
4) Presentation (more relevant to an art gallery in real-life, but you could twist this however you wanted)

Something I just sort of validated in my head:
The second "Standard" and the discussion that follows it could really get to, "Why take a photo?". In this case, I could argue that it was time spent with friends, driving around and just being kids (who can drive...). But if I said that I know it would be useless because I know from taking the photo myself that I simply liked the way the shapes and designs played out. I helped to enhance the image (in my view, at least...) by cropping some of it away, upping the contrast (or something), and putting a very precise border around it.
Just a thought...

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yes those are good things to go by when critiquing

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