I'll Toast you!by
RagnavComment by bspurgeon: Critique Club
Welcome to to DPC, and congrats on your first entry. Good news is that it's all uphill from here! ;) I know it's a rough way to start, but as you stated...live and learn.
First off, the composition is stagnant. Center composition photographs are tough, and usually are served well by symmetry.
This book is outstanding, and I've recommended it to a few friends. It's a great read, you will grow as photog just by reading and practicing the techniques of composition he discusses. The information is not unique, rather, it is presented very well.
The lighting is lacking given the multiple shades of white to gray in the background. Taking care to smooth foreground helps as well. Sticking a strobe/flash behind the backdrop will often create a nice white background.
Focus and depth of field. I suspect the point of focus is the front of the toaster. This is fine, but I think a deeper depth of field would improve the subject by bring more toaster in to focus. The small file size may or may not be playing a role here, I don't honestly know. An aperture of f/11 would have worked well here for the subject. However, without a lot of light, your ISO would have been quite high, and this may affect the image quality. I'm guessing you used a tripod given the shutter speed.
Finally the post processing. You have significant artifact around the tape. What steps did you use to process this image? It looks like you used a mask or extensive shadow/highlight adjustments.
Again, congrats on the first entry! I hope you stick around and continue to enter challenges.
