Cheese and Crackersby
HBunchComment by emorgan49: Hello from the Critique Club -
Okay, I have to start with the most glaring error her and get it out of my way before I can move on. that awful border. With all the arguement about boarders being allowed/banned, here is a perfect example where the border detracted from the photo. I bet you would have scored at least 30 places higher if you hadn't added the border. What's wrong with it? A simple mistake - the color. The yellows in your photo all have a red (orange) cast and the yellow in the border has a green cast, Yuck - clash. When i see a color issue or a brightness issue, I like to look at the photo on several different monitors. On one, the yellow looked like yellow and on three it looked like neon with the greenish slant. Perhaps it looked OK to you. try desaturating all the green and blue. Too many people (me included) marked you down for the border color.
Hmmm ... I better say something nice quick so you'ss keep reading. This photo has a lot of potential but fell short. the idea is good, meets the challenge and all. I like the textures especially. Nice contrast of textures. I love the composition, but do you think it feels crowded? I'd have like to see a little leg room or head room on one of the sides. I think the top would be my choice for a sliver of more background. The compositional lines are lovely, you have a good eye, I've noticed that in your other shots too. Nice diagonals, crackers point to cheese right to left, cheese slice leads the viewer back left to right. makes a circular pattern for the viewer whis is very pleasing. The repeating lines are great too, the lines in the piles of crackers are viaually interesting.
So composition is your strong suit, it seems to come naturally to you. Some other stuff needs work. Is anything in focus here? I would have preferred a nice sharp focus to emphasize the play of textures that you have set up.
Given your natural artistic eye, I'm wondering if the other flaws here could be as simple as a monitor calibration problem. You say you adjusted your colors in post processing. But to me everything is too light and the colors are not bright enough, they look deliberately washed out. Did they look better on your computer? Cheese and crackers are pale enough without making the photo too light in addition. The natural color wou;ld have been effective. And that blankety blank border - how did that look to you? Is it a glaringly bright and mis matched?
Just for the sake of arguement I think you should go back to this photo and fix it. Give it a different border and boost those colors. (Don't change the whote balance, you got that on the money.). hey, then you could reenter it in the Before and After challenge.
Now the disclaimer - remember that this is only one opinion - mine - and I am very far from an expert here. I'm sorry that it was a harsh critique.
Message edited by author 2003-01-31 09:40:53. 
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