Piano
by disco

Comment by PaulE:
Greetings from the Critique Club.

Hi Logan,

Welcome to DPC. Congratulations on your first challenge submission.

You have met the challenge and have the basics (in focus, no major blow-outs, etc...) covered. This has placed your score squarely in the realm where most of us reside - between 4.5 and 5.5. The challenge for you now is how to break out of this middle zone. It is a question not of what you have done wrong, but what you could do right to really set your shot apart.

The first area you can look into is composition. This is what seperates the artist from the technitian. The comments below indicate that your shot failed to grab the attention of your audience. The lines of the piano draw the eyes of the viewer right off the image. Loads of space doesn't serve a function. You could have tried any number of different techniques to make this more interesting. I suggest you read the three articles on composition on the following site to get more of an idea of what can be done here. //ronbigelow.com/articles/adv_comp/adv_comp.htm .

The second area you can consider is technical. I notice that you shot at F/5.6 (the widest aperture when fully extended on the kit lens that I assume you used) with a shutter-speed of 1/125 and an ISO of 1600. I assume you set the ISO at 1600 in order to manage to get the shuter-speed fast enough for you to hand-hold the camera in the low light. Given that the piano is stationary I suggest you could have rested the camera so that it was still to take a shot with a low ISO. This would have allowed you to stop-down the aperature for a deeper depth-of focus. This combination would have meant less noise, for a sharper image.

I hope my comments help and Good Luck in future Challenges!

Cheers
Paul

Piano
by disco

Comment by rick13601:
Meets the challenge. Good photo. Lacks originality.

Piano
by disco

Comment by CTBruce:
Cropping and a deeper DOF would really have helped this shot out. The upper right part of your photo really does nothing for the image.