nostalgiaby
crayonComment by ursula: Beautiful shot. I love the patterns of the upside-down chairs and the light on the wall. I like the shadow that looks like a high heel shoe towards the left on the wall. I like the treatment, it's very appropriate for the image.
Congratulations BTW on an excellent finish. 7th place (and almost 6.7 score) is great!
It's always hard to give an opinion on what you might not like about an image, because you're putting yourself on the line. You asked what could have been done differently, what didn't work.
In my opinion the image is a bit too busy. In particular the top 1/6th to 1/8th of the picture (the window and the tops of the chalkboards) doesn't add that much to the image, while at the same time taking away quite a bit of its mystery. To my eyes the image is stronger without that top section.
I also think that even though this is obviously a classroom (thus, education), the connection to "education" is not super strong. It doesn't scream education; it screams good old times, memories, stuff like that, but not education.
And last, the light is beautiful, but it is somewhat harsh. If there were a way to capture the same image with some dust in the air, or something to make the light softer, more voluptuous, I think the image would sing a better song. I suppose some of this could be done in post-processing, but IMO nothing beats the real thing, and it would be so much fun to actually capture a softer, more diffused but still very evening directional light in this place.
Hope this helps :)
~ursula
Photographer found comment helpful.