Beep Beepby
elru21Comment by Koriyama: *critique club*
Greetings!
First of the bat, I'll bet you're wondering why you got 4 positive comments yet a score of under 5. I'll try and answer that here. But before we begin, I looked at your 'baby botanist' tryptich and my wife said 'kawaii' and 'toriaizu, taberu ne', which means 'cute, I like that' and 'just for the moment, I'll try eating it (as babies do)'. Fun shots, and they'll be a welcome addition to your family album.
Compositionally, your photo is fine. You've got two very clear sections, the one with the action and the other, neatly set off by the background grass, showing the reflection. You've shown the challenge theme well here. You needed to realise the negative strength of the top left side: having so much out of the main focal range and in such an important area makes the whole photo feel like a snapshot, not a winning DPC entry. The arm, placed where it is bang right in the centre, brightly coloured and having such a strong line, is a clear candidate for the main subject, even though it's not. So, compositionally, you needed to deal with that problem by cropping. If I had had the same file, I might have used a horizontal cropping, using only a touch of the unreflected head, extending rightways to the mirror and deleting everything unhelpful.
I feel that the greenery is too dark for the bright mood intended. I don't know which software you use, but all allow for overall brightening and some allow for spot brightening. I'd brighten and blur the grass a bit.
Computer processing is obvious on the shirt sleeve on the bottom left. It looks unnatural. (Cropping it out would save a lot of heartache) but otherwise, you need to be careful how you deal with pure whites in digital photography.
The last point I'd like to make is about the face in the mirror. Simply put, the more the better.
I'll put up an edited version of your photo in my portfolio for a while. Look at it and tell me what you think. It's 'elru1.jpg'.
Best wishes,
Jim
ps. My edit isn't at all perfect, just a few strokes to show the ideas I've mentioned here.
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