Carrot Juiceby
agwrightComment by FranziskaLang: A Comment From The Critique Club
Hi Tony,
first of, let me congratulate you on your ribbon in the primary color challenge - your entry was beautiful and well spotted ... no setup ... a well deserved win!
And here, another beautiful image of yours, but totally different. I was instantly captured by the beautiful simplicity of the image, and how I could simply focus on what's there, no distractions, I really like it! Plus, it clearly contains orange, so it meets the challenge as well :)
COMPOSITION / CONTENT - The composition with the negative space and showing just half the glass works really well here, especially because the negative space has a very unobtrusive off-white color but has some texture that gradually disappears to the top of the photo but is clearly visible in the bottom half. The nice strong orange color of the carrot juice (yucky taste, but it does look good!) is emphasized further by the muted color of its surroundings.
CAMERA WORK / TECHNICAL - Nice focus, nice colors in your photo. Photographing glass is
really hard, there are always reflections and such going on. You didn't do a bad job, but there is definitely room for improvement in your photo, especially because it's so simple and clean that reflections are drawing the viewer's attention even more. If you could have avoided the reflection just in the juice (which makes one half look lighter than the other), I'm sure the photo would look even better. I backlit
my entry for the secondary color challenge (which I don't think would be suitable for your setup because the juice would be totally too dark), but the other thing I did was stand behind the camera (I used the tripod and timer to take the photo) with a black sheet of cardboard to eliminate some of the reflections in the background. I think that would've helped here, too.
POST-PROCESSING - No obvious flaws are always a sign of good post-processing, so you did well here, too. :) I agree with your choice of a very simple border, but I am not convinced that pure white was the best choice for it as it emphasizes that your background is more beige than white. I honestly don't have a suggestion as to what would've worked better. A one-pixel inner border in a different color sometimes just helps with the separation and then the white might work better. Maybe something for you to play around with further ...
Personally, I think your image should've scored higher. The reason it didn't might be the lack of a "wow" factor for people (based on the comments) and the strong competition that it was up against. I was just looking at the image some more (I often think of how can I copy the idea but still make it my own) and what strikes me is that the tip of a carrot peeking in from the bottom left of the image might have added a little bit of tension to the shot. Clearly, it wouldn't be the shot you had in mind, but an interesting variation to consider nonetheless, and you never know, something like that might just increase the wow-factor people felt was lacking a bit. I wouldn't change the composition because I really like it, but it might be fun to play around with some of the suggestions, too.
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about this review.
Franziska.
Photographer found comment helpful.
