In 2012 To improve my use of lightby
LawtonComment by aliqui: I don't understand what is in the triangular vase. I want to assume it's lemon juice of some sort, but natural lemon juice isn't that bright. The colors in the image do go well together though, and I'm a sucker for linen. There's just something very comfortable about linen.
When I think "lemon" I think "fresh", and this image doesn't seem very "fresh" to me. The lighting seems artificial, and the lemons seem dirty due to the dark shadowing in the dimples. There's a neat refraction thing happening with the light through the yellow liquid. It would be great to see this image brightened quite a bit with natural light (or at least a lot of soft artificial light) and still somehow keep that effect with the yellow liquid.
It also appears you have two light temperatures. There's a warm light from the left and a cold light from the right. The easiest thing to do there would be to warm up the cold light by shooting through or bouncing off of some kind of orange/yellow filter. That way your light sources are all the same and you can effectively adjust your white balance to the proper temperature.
The composition doesn't have a strong focal point. Everything is kind of just lined up on the same focus depth. I think bringing a couple objects closer to the viewer and letting the background objects get a little DOF blur would add interest. Those glasses certainly are tall and bright enough to hold their own without getting lost in the back of an image. To me the focus here should be where the action is. The "action" to me would be the cutting of the lemon, so that should be brought forward and given more weight.
And while I'm being critical, I don't think you're supposed to peel lemons with a steak knife. Cheers! :)
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