Night At The (Glass) Museumby
smardazComment by Gatorguy: Hi, Critique Club here...
I like a lot of things about this image. I like the richness of the blacks, The direction of the glass sculpture and the leading lines of the row of lights. Problem is though that I'm not sure I like them all in the same photograph. To me, there are a lot of elements competing for attention. It's hard for me to follow the sculpture into the picture and not be distracted by the bright lights and lines on the left. Same with the single bright light on the right.
There are a couple issues that stand out for me.
1) as already mentioned, too many strong elements competing with one another.
2) the subject, the glass sculpture, is devoid of detail in some areas. I realize shooting glass is difficult, but since you chose it as your subject matter...
3) the composition could be a little tighter. I played a bit by moving this around on my monitor to see if I could find a stronger composition and I found that (to me) it was stronger if I cropped from the right to the edge of the sculpture to eliminate the bar and the majority of the light on that side. From the bottom just past the blue reflection, which to me is a distraction. From the left just past the first yellow/orange light. That was just to move the end of the glass sculpture a little more off center. The result of the crops above would result in more of a pano crop but I don't think that's bad. Of course the cropping is all artistic vision so I'm just presenting you with something to think about, not what's right or wrong.
Once again, I like the image but these are my opinions about what would make it better for me.
Photographer found comment helpful.