Intravenous Beverageby
tcmartinComment: Greetings from the Critique Club :)
Firstly I want to congratulate you and the parents on this new and welcome addition to the family. Hopefully everyone is well and "wireless" as you youself said, it breaks my heart just imagining either one of my kids in the hospital so this photo makes me a little bit sad.
Anyway, down to buisness. I gave this shot a 5 in the challenge when voting. There are several reasons why I didn´t give it a higher score and the first one is the focus. I can´t really see any one point in pinpoint razor sharp focus except for her left hand and that drags the picture down a notch for me personally for as with most peope I immediately look for the eyes and face when looking at a photograph of a person and here it is out of focus.
The lighting is ok, I assume you used ambient light for this as I see the settings on your camera are 1/80, f1.8 and iso 200. This works pretty well, there are no strong shadows or blown highlights but the photo looks slightly underexposed, take this with a grain of salt though as I have a crappy monitor and I didn´t verify this by looking at the histogram. Anyway, I personally would have liked this shot better if you had managed to brighten it up a little bit without blowing out the highlights on the bandages on her arm.
The composition is good, a little cramped but it works for me and fits this shot. So is the contrast in the shot, her skin tones contrast nicely with the bandage and I looked at your profile and you seem to know what you are doing so I trust in your judgement in making this b/w and not colour.
As for fitting with the challenge, I voted as it did so (otherwise I would probably have given this a 2 or a 3) but I think I have a very open mind as regarding wether a shot fits with the challenge or not and I still think it´s in a gray area as what I normally consider a beverage is something that you drink through your mouth... Anyway, I guess a whole lot of people thought otherwise and that this didn´t fit the challenge and I have to say that I understand them and that probably accounted for the relatively low score.
Anyway, that´s all I have to say for this picture and again, congratulations on your newest member of the family, I sincerely hope everyone is well.
Kind regards, Larus.