The Bluesby
kittenfcComment by Bear_Music: *** C R I T I Q U E C L U B C O M M E N T ***
This image finished in the middle of the pack in "collections" challenge, which is IMO a fairly generous spot for it. Speaking of it as a challenge entry, it's not really shrieking "collection" in any way that can grab either the heart or the mind of the voters. It seems very "impersonal" for a collection. I realize that it's NOT impersonal, that there's a lot of YOU in this CD collection, but we can't really see that, you know? No titles, for example, to let us glimpse your taste in music.
Moving on, let's discuss this on its technical and compositional merits.
Its greatest weakness, arguably, is the composition; essentially no thought seems to have gone into this. There's no real "subject" for instance, in the sense that there's noplace for our eyes to focus on except a dark sapce that is actually LACK of subject... Now, you can imagine coming at this from a slightly different angle, for example simply by rotating the camera, so your gap there becoems a diagonal element int he composition, and then it would be much more dynamic and interesting.
You have a real depth-of-field problem also. There's really nothing actually IN focus here, almost as if the point of maximum sharpness were between the two groups of CD cases. It's frustrating to me as a viewer; you're giving me NO visual hooks to hang my hat on, as it were. The net effext is that the image comes across as a casual snapshot, not a planned image.
I do like the blue light, and I do like the nice radial darkening of the lower left corner.
Sorry I can't be more positive. Keep on plugging away. If your camera has an aperture-priority mode, learn to use it for these extreme closeups so youc an use a smaller aperture and attain more DOF.
Photographer found comment helpful.