White Pumpkinby
Postgate1Comment by SteveJ: Greetings from the Critique Club:
The challenge was Light On White II, your entry appears to be the wrong way round:)
Technical:
As you haven't posted your processing steps, I will have to try to guess what you may have done. I believe that apart from the obvious and somewhat overpowering under lighting, you also used on-camera flash as there two small highlights on the raised area of the front of the pumpkin. Sharpening is not evident, so either you didn't use any or were very frugal with it and as a result the focus seems just a tad off on the stem. This should have been the focal point of the image as it is where the eye is drawn automatically. It is a shame the under lighting is overpowering the bottom section of the picture as it makes the top of the pumpkin look a lot darker than it really is. The background looks like a sheet as there a couple of creases on the right of the image, these do detract from the overall image and will be marked down.
Composition:
It appears as though you have cropped for a centrally weighted balance to your image and while this is not a bad thing, placing the image more to the right, with blank area to the left would have lifted the overall image.
Overall:
A good effort that was let down by the lighting, which appears to be a single household bulb, slightly yellow tint, shining from below through the background material. The lighting is very concentrated under the pumpkin, and fades off very quickly towards the top of the photo which has given a grey, rather than white, background. I think this is the reason it scored at the lower end of your previous efforts and I'm afriad I have to agree with other voters that this is about where it belongs. It is not a disaster, but there is a lesson to be learnt...which is what this is all about. Why not try to set it up again and take some more shots with adjustments to the lighting. I hope this is helpful and constructive.
Steve
