Delicateby
AdzComment by jmsetzler: I'm not voting in this challenge so I'm not passing along a score, but this photo has missed the mark when it comes to Edward Weston. I can't recall ever seeing a Weston image that was done with a shallow depth of field. That was definitely one of the hallmarks of his style... deep depth of field...
Addendum per request:
In the spirit of the Edward Weston challenge, I would have probably scored this photo a 3 or maybe a 4. In my humble opinion, as I stated earlier, this photograph missed the mark quite a bit when considering the style of Weston. While it's mainly because of the shallow depth of field, it goes a bit beyond that. I don't believe that Weston would have chosen this subject material either. (Once again, this is all MY personal opinion of what Weston might do based only on my experience with his images.) Weston worked a good bit with still life situations, but he seemed to always work with the subject in its entirety rather than taking an abstract view of the subject. His subject choices outside the realm of landscapes always seemed to focus on the beauty of interacting shapes and forms which created appealing harmonies within the composition. Your image here has some interesting shapes and forms but they don't seem to interact in any specific or special way.
In a free study, I might have given this photo a 5 or possibly a 6 depending on how I felt on that particular day :) I believe that your execution of this image was exactly what you wanted it to be, so you accomplished that part. As for appealing to me, the viewer, I'm not finding a personal connection or appeal in the subject or composition. If I was judging the photo on technical qualities alone, I would score it higher, but in my opinion, technicals are just a small part of photographic art. The subject choice and the photographer's approach to that subject is 85-90% of the goal. What this means from me is that there are a lot of photographs out there that are technically poor in some people's eyes that strike me as fantastic images. If the subject and theme of the image overwhelm me, the technicals don't seem to matter so much. When a photographer manages to captivate me with the subject and approach AND managed to be right on target in the realm of technical achievement, it's a sure winner in my book :)
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