All the Possibilitiesby
EducatedSavageComment by Artifacts: Positives:
Solid composition and an interesting selection for a photo study. The fine detail directly in front of the sphere is nice. The lighting setup is reasonably good.
Technicals:
This image has a commonly found flaw in DPC submissions - over exposure - which is ironic for a low-key challenge. The bright lighting in the sphere itself is completely washed out which is particularly disappointing given that it is in the main subject. You want your composition to have a full range of brightness up to pure white which you do, but you do not want to let it go overboard and lose detail. Unfortunately, you did.
Looking at the luminosity display and sampling points around the image it looks like you may have made some serious color manipulations as indicated that even in the 'black' areas there is a lot more red and green than blue. Normally you want the black areas to go all the way to 0,0,0.
There are a lot of tiny bright specks and distracting detail that draws attention away from the sphere. Sharpness is a little soft, but sharpening it more makes the bright specs even more distracting. It would be best to clean and smooth the sphere and re-compose and reshot it without the specs.
The challenge:
Technically speaking, a low-key image is one where there are more pixels on the left (dark) side of the luminosity display (histogram) than on the right. Except for the overexposed area in the sphere this meets that definition.
Low-key normally is a technique best suited for studies of lighting and tonality. Your selection has great promise for doing that but is a little weak in the technicals for bringing it out.
Photographer found comment helpful.
