Quick Crit thread 2012

[Timo]

So, I've been in a photo class for a few months now and the entire time we were required to operate with B&W film with B&W paper. Recently, we've gotten into coloring our images through various mediums.

Now, I'm no professional photographer, nor do I have a neat digital SLR camera like Timo. I just want to see where my images stand at the moment. I'm looking to do some photography over the summer and I'd like to see where I need improvement. These are just two of my most recent, and probably best images.

Hand Colored
<oh>

Sepia Toned
<snap>

I'm using an ancient 35mm Canon At-1 with a standard 50mm lens. They are manually colored B&W photos, but I'm looking to get some standard color film for the future. Ignoring that, just tell me what I should do to fix my composition, contrast, etc.

Composition is pretty good, but i've always thought that photos with degraded quality (either by colour or contrast ala instagram) have a nice look regardless of the content. However it looks like you've got the rule of thirds down-pat and a good balance of foreground/background. One thing that really grinds my gears with photos is horizontal lines/horizons that aren't straight, but that's one thing i'm pretty anal about and unless you're doing landscape photography I guess it doesn't matter that much.