Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. -John Wayne by
ahjennyComment: One of the tricks to glare is actually more light. The reason you get glare is because you're trying to expose for the darker areas of the subject whether you realize it or not. If you give those darker areas their own light you don't have to push your highlights to the max. For shots like these, you might want to make your own little
light tent, which diffuses harsh light and spreads a nice soft light all over.
To your comment about the left ribbon being out of focus, it's not really. Your focus is great. The reason it seems that way is because it's out of the Depth of Field. You chose f/3.5 for this shot, which gives you a pretty narrow "DOF". If you were to bring that up to say f/8, the ribbon would be in the DOF also. Keep in mind that in doing that you'd need to increase the amount of light too by one more more ways; slower shutter speed, increased ISO, increased exposure compensation, or simply more light from your light source (gogo light tent!).
And for Rule of Thirds... meh, close enough! Maybe the angle of the left one is leaning too much to the right side? It's a simple straight forward, level shot, so if anyone is complaining about Rule of Thirds, they're probably being too picky. Yes, there is ways to make subjects like this have more impact. You can angle them differently, or lift them off the table and give them a fancy backdrop (hold them to a stormy sky, etc). I see this as a product shot though, and those are generally just as you have it.
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