The Ballerina...by
jmleliiComment by graphicfunk: from the critique club:
Ah yes, the ballerina is known for her superb balance. You selected a very good subject but depended on the tradition to convey the balance.
Let us examine what went wrong. First, you chose a stretching pose. This pose has beauty but for the inmmediate challenge if you would have just taken a picture of one foot and on her toes you would have scored much higher. So, it is not that your picture is bad, it is simply that it did not deliniate the balance, You simply implied it. This does not mean that ideas with implied concepts do not work, it means that the implied concept was not generally accepted by the same members that attended this challenge.
Like I said, I like the pose but let us see if we can improve on this without changing the picture. Look at the photograph carefully. Make that you are a viewer. You are drawn by the tender dark to light thumbnail. It has a beautiful diagonal divide and the sepia enhances it further. You now enlarge the image and you want to examine the detail. Since the shadow area needs detail investigation, the eye hurries over to her foot. Is the toe shoe on or off? Now the eye follows the hand up and it pauses to determine if that is her thumb joint that seems to portrude from her wrist. Fingers are very important and sometimes you have to go out of your way to make sure the camera makes the best capture.
The viewer leaves here with two pesky questions and now decides to enter the shadow area. He looks and squints to steal some detail but the hairline remains a mystery. The next question: is this a true stretch? Somehow the knee seems bent.
Again, you get a high mark for the composition and the selected lighting. We are not talking about the challenge. This is what I would have done; Checked finger and toe position carefully, even taising the camera angle a hair to help. I want the knee straight, elese we do a different take. And now I want to make certain that the shadow area speaks better about the form. I would keep the same contrast but I would introduce a little fill light to help out.
To conclude, you have a nice compositional sense all you need do is pay more attention to detail. The more attention you pay, the less question a viewer will have. Some viewers detect a flaw and look suspiciously at the rest. I give you a 7 for composition, subject matter and pose. A 5 for lighting and a 4 for the little oversights. That is 16 divided by 3 and it end up at 5 plus. But hey, you have the major element down pad, you just need the minor details attended to. Stick with it and I expect to see more of your exciting images. dan
Photographer found comment helpful.