A bicycle with peanut butter
by AnnaP

Comment by sherpet:
Excellent idea, which is very well done...

Let's play!
by AnnaP

Comment by posthumous:
I love the abstract quality of the wall/door, combined with the iconic positions of the dogs. 10.

Let's play!
by AnnaP

Comment by Germaine:
The massive brick wall overwhelms the dogs. You really have two pictures here.

A bicycle with peanut butter
by AnnaP

Comment by ericpi:
I like the lighting / tone of the image. Not quite sure about the bicycle / peanut butter combo, though.

A bicycle with peanut butter
by AnnaP

Comment by fotomann_forever:
This is a neat image.

A bicycle with peanut butter
by AnnaP

Comment by Jutilda:
I like the deep areas. For some reason this is believable. LOL Not the typical - you incorporated the two elements well. The macro shows of the details of the bike well. 8

A bicycle with peanut butter
by AnnaP

Comment by CEJ:
Now that is some very creative thinking. Very well done on all levels!

Let's play!
by AnnaP

Comment by noseprints:
nice. love the composition and action.

So happy together
by AnnaP

Comment by awpollard:
**Greetings from the Critique Club**

I see here creative and cheerful composition that definately meet the spirit of the challenge as this would be considered an odd couple.

Off the bat, remember this is in my opinion, the shallow Depth of Field is probably the number one factor in the score that you received. There are several areas that are out of focus due to the DOF. They tend to compete with the areas of very sharp focus primarily the faces of our subject.

Our eyes are funny things and want to see everything in focus. The faces of your models are tack sharp and the eye does not need to work to see those clearly but then they catch the large dark area in the foreground that is out of focus. The viewer is immediately drawn away from the subject to that area and trys to make it clear. Once evident that I can't bring that to focus the hand pops out as being unclear.

Shallow DOF creates a Conflict to the viewer in this case. The viewers eyes dart around the composition never staying in one area long enough to put it all together.

It seems there is plenty of light on the subject; so to create a deeper DOF I might have used a smaller Aperture somewhere around f/8 or so. A deeper DOF would bring the foreground into focus making it less a distraction. If the background becomes In focus (because you have it nicely blurred here) I would move the models further away from it.

Other things that we could do to make it more DPC appealing would be a crop that eliminates as much of the OOF are as possible. Or better yet as this was an advanced challenge add a Romantic (soft) effect to the entire shot, by duplicating the entire shot, applying some gaussian blur to the top layer and then making that top layer transparent just to the point where there entire shot is soft but detail of the faces come through.

Final thought would be, beings that this setup appears to be a portrait (I'm assuming because of the background) I think I would use the pose you have but turned the female head to look at the camera.

Just my thoughts...

Andy

Let's play!
by AnnaP

Comment by ericpi:
My eye is drawn much more to the red wall than to the subjects.