Time to Celebrate!by
kbhatia1967Comment by LalliSig: Greetings from the critique club! Here is the critique you requested :)
First of all, this definately meets the challenge as I am concerned, no question about that. I didn´t vote in this challenge but if I had, I honestly probably would have given this a 5 and moved on to the next photo, opting not to comment. 5 from me means neither good or bad, there is pretty much nothing bad about this shot. 5.3 is a pretty fair rating for this shot I think, if you had asked me before the challenge how it would have went I probably would have guessed 5.5.
Now, how to improve that score or how I think it could improve. The composition or angle it´s shot from is ok. I still think you should have included all the pearls on both sides though. The lighting is not bad but could be better, I don´t know what you used but it seems uneven, very bluish on the left side and whiter on the right side. Sometimes when I have enough light form a window, I take still life using just that, just use a big window and natural light. I think this shot would have been better with a smaller aperture though, I see you shot this at 4.5 with a shutterspeed of 1/250 wich indicates to me that you did not use a tripod for maximum sharpness. The key to these images is detail so what I would suggest were an aperture of about 8 and therefore a shutter of about 1/60 to 1/80 and a tripod. Then the final ingredient would be the wow factor, something different and odd or wierd like all the ribbon winners in this challenge.
Anyway, hope this helps, just keep in mind this is just my opinion and what the heck do I know after all :) Like I said, this shot is not bad at all and ended up just over the middle in this challenge so keep it up :)
Kind regards from Iceland, Larus.
edit: fixed an embarrasing spelling errorMessage edited by author 2006-05-30 13:44:23. 
Photographer found comment helpful.