Valentine's Momentby
drisComment by strangeghost: Greetings from the Critique Club
by strangeghost
The first three parts of this critique are written based purely on examination of your photo. "Final thoughts" is written after reviewing your score, photographer's comments, and voter comments.
TECHNIQUE
While you were obviously going for the dimly lit ambiance, the result may be a bit too dark. Even on my relatively bright LCD monitor, there are too many areas in the photo that are overly dark, and devoid of any detail. It appears as though the candles were the only sources of illumination. While it creates a lovely effect - and I think it worked well overall - it does leave, for example, the girl's face in shadow, while her upper right arm is the brightest object in the scene other than the candle flames (and objects closest to the candles). When dealing with scenes were lighting is so central, keep in mind the inverse square law of light intensity. An object twice as far from the illumination source will only receive 1/4 as much light. Look, for example, at the near wine glass as opposed to the far one, and the illumination of the near wine glass compared to the man's face. It would have been effective to have had at least one more candle out-of-frame to the right, to add some balance to the lighting, while preserving that soft candlelit ambiance. Focus is sharp and I like the fact that your depth of field is large, preserving the bookcases in the background. Books make beautiful backdrops, in my opinion, for a shot like this. Your choice of a reddish duotone is excellent, and complements the title link to Valentine's day, as well as the red wine.
COMPOSITION
I think the composition is very clean and well balanced. I might have cropped a bit tighter to eliminate some of the dead space along the bottom, but that's relatively minor. Referring again to illumination, and how it impacts here on composition, consider the label on the bottle of wine. Bright white and only inches from the light, it becomes the brightest object in the picture, other than the flames themselves. It looks like you rotated the bottle intentionally to hide the larger label (good thing too), but you probably could've removed the label entirely for better effect. One more minor quibble, the candle flames are tilted slightly to the left. I've tried photographing candles before and I can attest to how damned difficult it is to still the air entirely. From that perspective, you did very well, but the slight tilt is annoying. Straight-up steady flames would be sooo much more pleasing to the eye. Overall, it's a very simple and logical composition.
EMOTIONAL IMPACT
In my view, this photo had the potential to be much more memorable if it had been a bit brighter. I'm guessing most viewers appreciated the artistic merits, but were frustrated at the dimness. Dim photos just can't "pop" the way brightly lit, colorful ones can, making this genre of moody photos very difficult to pull off. In conclusion, I think the impact of your photo was dampened by the darkness - moody candlelit scenes are a challenge to the photographer to find the right balance.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Reading over your comments, it is very clear that my hunch about the overall illumination of the scene was correct. Most computer monitors just didn't do justice to your shot. Nearly every commenter expressed some variation on the "too dark" theme. Your final two commenters during the voting, Yanko and Alecnorman, are using bright LCDs, I'd bet you a bottle of wine! If you are using an LCD monitor (as I am) to edit your shots, make sure you have a chance to preview them on a CRT before submitting. In conclusion, I liked your shot a great deal, but you were doomed from the start by the darkness of the scene, particularly the right half where the subjects are located. Your final score of 4.9 almost certainly reflects this fact, quite apart from strong merits of your concept and composition.
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