Here Be Giantsby
cpanaiotiComment by e301: from the lee shore of the Critique Club
I think I'd prefer to take the approach that your depth of field here might be a deliberate thing, rather than making what seems to me to be a presumption that it must be a mistake. Similarly with the comment that the spoon 'seems to have a stain on it' - well? Let us presume you've committed to 'print' (in the sense at least of permanence) just what you meant to.
There are certain obvious choices that have been made - including this tendentious DOF. The quality of light, the colour (fact) and tonality of the image also, along with certain compositional elements. The depth of field forces the attention to particular areas of frame - the curve where the cup meets saucer, the edge of the suacer, the concavity of the spoon. The loom of the handle, being out of focus, parallels the distant edge of the table(?) in the background, giving a sense of a third dimension to this small world. And yet, what at first sight might be the primary force of interest here - the glow of ethereal light through the spoon's handle, is equally relegated by its out-of-focus quality. The interest here is evidently not one shared by the photographer.
In fact, all the force of composition in this shot tends to the head of that spoon - as, of course, it should in this challenge. It is placed at the apex of the curves of the saucer, and the obvious head of the leading lines of its own handle. And there is a depth to the reflections there - where all else in image is either flat white background or only partially seen reflections in the porcelain, here we know we have 'true' reflections of the environment - and yet they are as indistinguishable as anything. Even in the metal barrel of the spoon we see only a false distortion of a world we know is there - so warped as to be practically unrecognisable. So what is it that makes this certainty of a 'real' world - the antithesis of the block soft-light of the studio, the pointlessness of those controlled reflections, the paralysing sterility of the blank metal world?
There is of course the suspicion of windows in the reflections on the cup's handle, but I think it is more the ordinariness of the light - this presentation os no high-powered lighting genius at work: this is ordinary light, everyday light, the light of the world. This is quite naturally complemented by the equally everyday composition - even, perhaps, verging on the clumsy in the oh-so-sophisticated eyes of the composition faddists.
In taking the ordinary so far, in privileging the humdrum by this exhibition, this might be taken to be a subtle but quite stern point against the vacantly pretty, absolutely controlled world we are so often presented with.
Ed
Message edited by author 2006-02-05 18:05:58. 
Photographer found comment helpful.