Portable Musicby
SquishyBComment: You mentioned you had not received much feedback--so here's my take on this shot (I didn't vote).
Subject material. Fits the challenge, Placement of "Still life" is interesting. It's rather "static" though. Doesn't tell a story or make the viewer identify with it, e.g., that there's sound coming out, the music that's playing, the situation (e.g., taking a picture of someone doing an activity with headphones on is something we all identify with--seeing anyway).
Technical. This seems to lack much continuous tonality. The blacks are very black on my calibrated monitor; I don't see any reflected light on the black surfaces showing me their texture or shape. That might be from using an autolevels, or simply setting the black level too aggressively. That's perhaps the biggest issue with this shot. There's a lot of black, and lacking any light, it makes it flat and dark.
There seems to be little tonality in the blue areas as well. Not quite posterized, but there appears to be two dominent blues, and only a little in-between tonality.
I can't tell if you did this on purpose, or if it could have been done better with you taking more control of levels, for example, if one of your tools is doing this, perhaps due to some automatic setting.
Hope that helps. If you want me to look at the original and see what the levels issue is, I'd be happy to. Just send me a PM.
Photographer found comment helpful.
