** Greetings from the Critique Club **
Overall, this is a pretty good shot, a good attempt at capturing smoke, but I'm not sure how much this meets the challenge without some lengthy interpretation. This may be one fact your score is so low. It is unfortunate though you didn't receive more comments.
Composition
You have captured a decent spectrum of zones, from the black to white. The only problem here is that there is too much negative space and not enough emphasis on the smoke. Don't get me wrong, you don't need a lot of smoke to make an impact, rather, something interesting needs to happen with the smoke. For example, this photo:
has nearly the same amount of dark space, but the smoke spirals are quite interesting. I pulled that image from the Smoke II challenge.
Technical
Technically, you shot this well. The DOF could be increased a little which may provide a little more detail in the smoke. Your choice of shutter speed was well placed to stop the motion. As for the lighting, it may be worthwhile playing with the lighting a little more to see what different angles and intensities (distance from the smoke) provides you.
You should definitely experiment more, and go through the forums and challenges to get ideas. I hope to see something in a free study one day. |