Like Father, Like Sonby
pix-alComment by Artyste: Hello, and greetings from the Critique Club. I'm Artyste, and I'm honored to give your first ever entry it's first every Critique Club Critique. I promise to be gentle.. ish.
Initial Thoughts
Interesting choice of canvas size, and a little overexposed.. and yes, those are definitely shoes.
Composition / Content
First challenge entry, and already you are going different with the size and crop of your photo :) Just a reminder that on DPC, a crop of this nature isn't generally well received, but a great photo can counterbalance it occasionally. I think it works well here, and gives an otherwise straightfoward shot a bit of an edge. I think voters agreed to some degree giving you a higher score than I would have expected personally. Content wise, you've nailed the challenge, but not done much else. The helter-skelter arrangement of the shoes doesn't say anything specific to me, and speaks of a hurried shot. You say that you didn't want to try anything too clever, so I'll take this as a testing grounds sort of entry. Just don't be afraid to play around with perspectives, angles, or set-ups.
Background
One word. Wrinkles. Wrinkles are death here on DPC, and care should be taken to make sure your background is as smooth as possible (unless you're really adamant that a wrinkled texture is key to your photo, which could happen). I'm not sure if this is just a furniture cover, or if you hung it for the purpose of the shoot, but a quick ironing can really help for next time :)
Camera Work / Tehcnical
This looks to me like natural light, but the white shoes are really over-exposed (with hot spots on the background as well). Using a smaller aperature (say 5.6 and up), would have helped control the over-exposure here. To keep detail in the darker shoes, use a white board or some other form of reflective material to fill in the shadows. Alternatively, you could but the darker shoes more in the light, and the lighter ones towards the shadow. You've got a nice touch on the focus though, although the scene does seem to still be slightly soft.
Ditial Processing
In addition to curves, I think that a little touch of sharpening work would have helped out as well. Sharpening should be one of, if not *the*, last steps of your processing. Generally, USM is the best method, and a starting point of 254%/0.3/0 (0.3 radius and 0 threshold), works pretty well, and you can tweak it from there. It takes some experimenting, but decent sharpening can really benefit a photo.
Fits the Challenge
Indeed it does, but lacks that "wow" category that everyone talks about.. although you admit that you weren't really going for that anyway.
My Opinion of the Photo
It's cute, and evokes a little bit of emotion, but there's not much else going for it. The over-exposure is a little bit eye-straining, and that wrinkled sheet just does nothing for me. Still, for a first challenge entry, it's really not that bad.. just a few things to work on for next time. Good to have you with us, stick around, and good luck on future challenges.
Photographer found comment helpful.