Vortex Shearsby
777STANComment by boyd2000: Greetings from the Critique Club
First what stands out is the angles in this shot. The camera angle and scissors angle give a very off-balance perspective which adds interest to the shot. It also gives the optimum angle to keep the upper side of the shears (is that different than scissors?) in focus and the lower side quickly going out of focus relegating it to a minor part of the picture. Aesthetically this is much better than the opposite. Finally, it allows you to have the largest possible shears size within the picture size allowed in the challenge.
I especially like the table surface lighting, gradually going from nearly full black to nearly full white. It looks to me to be a difficult task, but you did it well.
I'm undecided about the lighting on the shears. If the purpose was to show the shears well it would have probably worked out by rigging up a light tent or otherwise spreading out the light more. As it is much of the shears are dark. However you may not have been able to get the 0 to 255 lighting gradient on the surface. There seems to be a little fuzziness in the foreground. Maybe it's the shallow DOF, but the surface appears much different before the focal plane than in the sharp focus zone.
Other than that, with all due respect there isn't a lot here to hold my attention, which may explain the poor placement you got in this challenge. You did a lot of processing on it. I don't know if you do similar processing normally, but the effort may have been better expended on a more complex subject.
On the other hand I like when shots are simple. I tend to make pictures too complex, usually to my detriment. In any case keep shooting and entering challenges. If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me.
Photographer found comment helpful.
