Merry Christmas by
Sammy05Comment by snaffles: Greetings from the Critique Club!
First impression: Colours and textures are lacking a little, but the overall concept is quite good. It just needs more work.
Artistic: The colours don't quite have the pop you probably wanted; this might have looked better in b/w. Very good use of leading lines and thirds, you're on the right track, and I like the POV.
Technical: Lighting indoors, esp a mall is always tricky, as there can be mixed lighting going on and throwing off your white balance, which may have happened here. Try switching to Auto WB in such situations. If worse comes to worse, try shooting monochrome (black and white).
In terms of settings, you might want to start around 400 ISO and been ready to go up to 800. You could have then shot a lot which faster, at least 1/200. If you're shooting handheld, don't expect to be able to shoot slower than 1/40. If you can, try opening up your aperture to f3.5 to lose some of the drab ceiling detail. If the decorations are still up and you're in the area, try re-shooting as per these suggestions. Experiment and see what you come up with, it's the only way to learn your camera.
Overall: A very good attempt, now go forth and shoot! And don't let the scores get to you, especially in the early days. You can and will learn a lot from this site, so make the most of it. And by all means feel free to look at some of the shots I entered back in 2006-2008 especially...I'm sure you'll get a good chuckle out of some of them :-)
Feel free to PM me with any questions.
Susan
Photographer found comment helpful.