Fender Stratocaster
by gudbjargarson

Comment by Kavey:
Critique Club

Initial thoughts
Nice choice to go black and white, interesting study of small detail area, nice use of shallow DOF.

Composition/ Content
I like the content here very much. Knowing nothing about guitars I would not know what this was without the title (and, to be truthful, still don't entirely know what I'm looking at) but that doen't matter at all. I particurly like the inclusion of the text showing the manufacturer, model and origin of the item. It makes this feel like an attempt to really share with me the details of something precious to someone.
I think the high contrast black and white works very well, especially where the strings show so strongly against the darkness behind. Detail in the texture of the surfaces is also picked out nicely by that high contrast.
Composition is reasonable but doesn't really resonate (no pun intended). The knob at the top centre is what makes it feel a little unbalanced to me. The partial knob in the upper rightof the frame is fine and feels more balanced by the solidity of the text and shadow at the lower left.

Background
I like your decision to spot light only the area being shown to us and leave everything else in dark shadow. It instantly creates a more intimate ambience to the image.

Camera Work - Technical
I'm a big fan of shallow depth of field and I like how it's used here to throw out the foreground text and the furthest knob.

Digital Processing - Technical
Nothing that stands out in terms of the image itself.
Personally Iike the border and find the thin white inner border and thicker black outer border work well with the content of the image.

Fits The Challenge
Yes.

My Opinion On The Photo
I like it very much but would be interested in slightly different angles/ compositions to see if one of those changed it from a "nice" to a "wow".

Does size matter?
by gudbjargarson

Comment by Konador:
Update: Woo I won the music challenge with the T1 (on the right) and came 23rd in this challenge with the 300D (on the left). So I reckon size certianly doesn't matter :)

Does size matter?
by gudbjargarson

Comment by Moose101:
The wife has never complained, but I guess that all depends on the person and the choices that need to be made. Great idea for the picture and well defined facial expression. My wife really got a laugh out of it, nice to have a little humor. Keep up the good work.

Fender Stratocaster
by gudbjargarson

Comment by reevey:
In retrospect to my comment, actually it's not that obvious :-s

Fender Stratocaster
by gudbjargarson

Comment by reevey:

Originally posted by graphicfunk: Nothing like a fender strat. bumping up on good taste. lol

It's the headstock, duh. :-D

Fender Stratocaster
by gudbjargarson

Comment by graphicfunk:
returning for comments.
Nothing like a fender strat. bumping up on good taste. lol

Fender Stratocaster
by gudbjargarson

Comment by GeneralE:
I hear most of the "original" Strats have ended up in Japan (in the hands of collectors) as well.

Fender Stratocaster
by gudbjargarson

Comment by arpita:
the lighting is great. but the composition is not very pleasing. after a lot of thinking, i think it might be due to the presence of a large number of lines which are not unified (the fender line, the stratocaster line, the line of the strings, and the line of the knobs, they all go different places). also the border has the clean straight white lines which further emphasize the other lines.. maybe it would be better with a plain border. also the knob bang in the upper center of the picture is not pleasing, changing the angle from which the picture was taken might have helped the composition.

Does size matter?
by gudbjargarson

Comment by hyphaefungi:
Yes it does. Depends on where you're going, what you're doing. :D I definitely can appreciate the idea here. Good composition.

Fender Stratocaster
by gudbjargarson

Comment by Anachronite:
akkk sacrilgeous! the best strats are the ones made at Fender's USA factory... :o) ask any musician interesting shot though