Good for the Heartby
tembaComment by I Enjoy Ham: greetings from the critique club jane,
the first thing i would like to say is that studio photography is a whole different beast then landscape photography. I've browsed through you're portfolia and seem to have stumbled upon a common theme in all of your studio like shots. All or most of them have a little bit too shallow DOF for the subject, and although barely noticeable this little fact can make all of the difference in a studio shot. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the camera settings but just a quick lesson in DOF. DOF is determined by two things, the aperture of the lens, and the focal length of the lens. If you're using a 70-200mm lens at an aperture of f/2.8 at 200mm the DOF is going to be very small (this is a setting many people use for portraits because it provides just the right amount of DOF to get the eyes in focus and give the background beautiful bokeh). However if your using a 17-40 lens at f/2.8 the DOF is going to be larger. Things get confusing because DOF is contorlled by the aperture as well not just the zoom. Say you're using that same 70-200 lens only now its on f/22 the DOF will be mush larger. Anyway, this shot could use just a little bit more DOF, i would bump the aperture up just too f/11 or so, especially because you can have a longer exposure since the subjuct is stable.
Another thing thats very important in studio like shots is lighting. The photographer in a studio is creating the lighting, making their own shadows and highlights, i would even venture to say that a studio photographer is more a light artist than anything else. Im just guessing here but it looks like you used tungsten lights for this shot. All light create a different glow, tungsten lights create a yellowish cast, while halogen bulbs create a more blueish cast. This is why white balance is very important. You're camera should have different WB settings for tungsten and flourescent, and halogen. Also one of the perks of shooting in RAW is that you can fix the WB in you're RAW conversions. You're WB in this shot seemoff by just little bit towards the yellow end of things.
Everything commented on here is meant to be constructive so if you have any comments or questions please feel free to contact me via PM and ill get back to you ASAP,
-Dan
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