To study the light of the old mastersby
Rino63Comment by alexzen: Welcome from the Critique Club
Composition
The first thing I notice is that most of this photo is another piece of art. I think that must have effected the scoring. I like the position of the magnifying glass in relationship to the man's eye. The line between the eye and the middle of the glass draws me through the image. And the partial inclusion of the woman's face is nice as well.
The hand seems to detract from an otherwise interesting photo. The white balance for the skintone appears off as well. It seems that keeping the hand out of the photo might have helped it considerably.
I did not realize it was a magnifying glass at first. I think because the glass goes almost border to border, it does not makes itself clear. I think I would have positioned it so it was smaller relative to the overall image so it popped out more.
Focus
It is not clear that the magnifying glass has any dramatic impact on the viewer's view of the painting, so perhaps using a more dramatic shallow depth of field would have achieved that effect better, by allowing the background to blur and the image within the circle to be sharply in focus. F10 is going to keep alot in focus including background. I really want the glass to change my view of the painting, but the focus and magnification within the glass area is not much different than that of the background. Also, the actual frame of the glass is not in focus either. With basic editing you have to rely on the right DOF to achieve these effects and perhaps more attention in that area would have helped this image communicate stronger.
Summary
Basically this is an interesting interpretation of the challenge. If I could change just one thing, it would be to get that hand out of the image. If I could change a second thing it would be to change the focus and DOF to add drama and pop.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me via the PM system.
Ken
Photographer found comment helpful.
