Seriously Refreshingby
RoosterComment: Nice try but it isn't selling me. I'm distracted by the acne on the model's face and his looming presence overpowers the product. The bottle of Aquafina should be far more prominent. Remember what you are selling.
Editied post voting...and edited a second time for typos. ;-D
Hi there...I didn't mean to be insulting with this comment. When I said 'nice try' I wasn't being flip. I really did mean that it was a good effort. As a portrait, it is quite nice actually. Your brother is a handsome subject (I actually thought he was a hired model, in fact) I just felt that his skin needed toning down for the true feel of an advertisment. Models and actors don't really have perfect skin (ever notice Brad Bitt and Gwen Stefani have some acne scarring?). What they do have is artists who perfect their skin post-production.
Anyway, this was an Open Challenge and there wasn't much you could do about smoothing out the skin.
I was taking the idea of 'advertisment' fairly seriously in evaluating these entries so I felt something like that was worth mentioning. If this was meant to be a casual portrait, I wouldn't have commented on it.
In terms of the relative prominence of the product, I still feel that the bottle of Aquafina might have been emphasized more strongly. Perhaps with sharper focus and being really choosy with selecting a perfect looking bottle---one that has no wrinkles in the label. A trick I recently read about for photographing water is to replace it with white vinegar which stays very clear and uncloudy.
My only other feeling about this image is that the color cast is a bit cool and could use warming up in Photoshop. Your brother's skin which I imagine to be a lovely warm, golden brown looks rather dull and grey, possibly because of the weather conditions at the time of shooting.
You captured a lovely, intelligent expression, a natural pose, and managed some nice catch lights in his irises.
Message edited by author 2004-08-20 14:47:26. 
Photographer found comment helpful.
