Nature Garden Artby
trainComment by Matthew: Critique Club
Hello from the Critique Club!
This is quite a stunning subject matter. An excellent choice, with "branch" being obvious on several levels. The lighting is great, as you have taken the picture at a time with some good side lighting (early morning or evening?), which has thrown shadows of the branches onto the webs, and lines the edges of the branches very nicely (almost a sun kissed silhouette).
The trouble with subjects like this ( which are intensely interesting) is how far to document them (ie get everything in) and how far to limit the extent of the image but capture the essence of it in an image - the latter will often be a better photo, at the expense of not recording the whole moment for posterity. I think that this image records an amazing scene well, but falls down a little on recording its "essence".
Compositionally, the visually stimulating parst of the image appear (to me) to be the centre of each of the webs in strong light and the largest of the branches. I would be very tempted to move in with the camera and fill the frame with just these (probably trying to follow the Rule of Thirds rule). I would experiment with moving in much closer and filling the frame with the webs, and taking photos of just one web in focus with the others in the background. The bits of web at the side of the image and away from the tree are interesting from a documentary point of view, but less so from a strength of image perspective.
One of my main aims with this subject would be to get one or more webs into focus, some branches into focus, but to get that background out of focus (outside the Depth of Field). As others have commented, there is so much detail in the background that it detracts from the focal point of the image. It is not attractive enough or plain enough to leave in the image.
You have some technical limitations with your camera in selecting a shallower DoF, but there are ways around it. I think that any portrait mode would be one of the better modes to use, combined with getting closer to your subject. At an extreme, you could see what you could do with the macro mode.
In any case, this is a strong image that rightfully did well.
Good luck with the next challenge!
Matthew
Photographer found comment helpful.
