For those who served with honor - USAFby
notorious77Comment by strangeghost: Greetings from the Critique Club
by strangeghost
COMPOSITION
I think this was a great compositional idea that suffered from a few major flaws. First, the placement of the grave marker and the flowers is awkward, the way both are sequestered to their side of the picture. I can't decide if it's a picture of the marker, the grass or the flowers. There is no interaction between the elements to suggest drama, emotion or stories. Much better would have been an arrangement were the flowers are backed by the marker. Your angles and lines are very simple too, leaving little inherent interest in the composition. I visualize a close up shot on a few flowers/stems, from an interesting angle, with the grave marker visible in the background, with a few engraved words visible to set a mood.
TECHNIQUE
The flowers are blown out a bit (whites losing detail due to overexposure) and may also be a little soft. The grave marker is not quite vertical, which also adds a bit of a disconcerting feel to the viewer (feels like something is leaning...). Then there's the image dimensions. You are allowed 640 pixels on the longest dimension, and I can rarely think of a case where you should use every pixel you're given. Your image is just too small. Many voters will penalize this automatically because you're making them work harder to see what you've shot. If your resizing was to keep the file size (kilobytes) down to the 150K limit, read the tutorials on how to accomplish this without compromising your image dimensions. The other technical point I'll make is the lighting. The flowers are a bit overexposed, and the grave marker looks underexposed, as though it's in shadow. Choose your time of day so that you have sunlight over your shoulder, and ideally, hitting your subject obliquely. The deep-cut lettering in a grave marker can look dramatically 3-D with good lighting.
OVERALL IMPACT
From your photographer's comment, it was clear that this was a shot that was motivated by a strong emotional tie for you. Pay attention to the issues of composition and go shoot this again. Spend some time browsing the challenge archives on this site. I recommend the "cemetery" and "heros" challenges particularly. Look at how others have shot similar scenes to yours and study their composition. Observe how every detail plays a role in creating the final impact and eye-appeal of a photo.
Keep shooting. Keep experimenting, and keep learning!
Photographer found comment helpful.