No Discrimination Allowed( The Language of the Game)by
aprudhommeComment by spiritualspatula: Hello, I’m from the Critique Club; just stopping by drop you a comment!
As a relatively new member, I hope you’re enjoying DPC, and I’m glad to see you’ve already entered a couple challenges.
At first glance, this image wouldn’t strike me as a language entry, for a couple reasons. After reading your comments, I understand where you were going with this and I like the idea of depicting commerce as a language, truly the only real international language, in fact. Unfortunately, viewers cannot see your comments during voting, so the fact that this is a fruit vendor would have been lost on me, as I didn’t realize that without the help of your details. I also don’t immediately associate flags with languages, but instead with nationality (though that is obviously similar to language). I agree that the cropping of the flagpole is distracting, and the buoys as well. In terms of composition, I would prefer to see some more space in front of the boat, and maybe have the boat be a bit lower in the frame as well, to more coincide with the rule of thirds as well as foregoing a centered subject. The midday lighting is very harsh and leads to extreme shadow and light. Going by your photo details, I would definitely suggest you lower your ISO for shots like this. Another tip in regards to settings would be to resist from stopping down your aperture completely. At a certain point, stopping down will actually start to decrease the sharpness of photos due to diffraction. Your colors are well saturated, and the flags have great pop to them.
As I said, I really like where you were going with business as a language, I just think it was a bit hard for viewers to grasp that intent without reading your comments.
-Derek
Photographer found comment helpful.
