Best Amongst Equalsby
TejComment: From the Critique Club:
I have been looking at this for a couple of days now trying to develop a definate oppinion of it. I see what you are trying to do with the shot and really like the concept. But the concept just doesn't quite make it through to the finished product.
Good points: Once again I really like the concept. The selective desat actually has a reason for this composition in this challenge. Many times you see these selective desat shots and wonder why they bothered to leave in a color or why they took out another color.
Not so good points: Your lighting is very harsh in this shot as seen in the blown out highlights in each fruit. You could try burning the highlights to soften them up a little or better yet use not so harsh lights to begin with. In a shot like this I try to bounce my lighting of a light colored wall or posterboard to help diffuse and soften it. Another way you could light this is to hang white sheets or other cloths between your lights and the subject. Either of these techniques will help to soften the highlights. This shot is very soft. In a set up studio type shot, the voters here like to see very crisp and sharp subjects. Your composition here really has two subjects. The subject that you want to draw attention to is the colored fruit. This subject is off-centered which hits the theme of the challenge. The other subject that I see is the group of fruit as a whole. This is the subject that really grabs your eye. This subject is almost but not quite centered in the shot. It doesn't look right like this. It almost looks like an oversight. If you would try a square crop and center the whole group, the colored berry would still be off center and you would have a more powerful composition. The other thing to try would be to crop out further and put the pile of berries on a third line. Once again a more powerful composition.
This is a set up studio type shot. You have total control over the whole shot from subject to lighting to composition. I believe that the voters tend to be (conciously or not) harsher in their voting because of this. Any imperfection in the shot will be construed as an oversight of the photographer. I believe that this may be why your score was as low as it was. My suggestion is to use this as a study type of shot. Get more fruit, rearrange things, try moving your lights around. Try different croppings. Play with it. Shoot it over and over again. It's digital after all! If you chose to do this, please share your results with the rest of us!
I hope you find some things helpful here. As always, if you have any questions about my comments, please feel free to PM me.
Yours
TC
Photographer found comment helpful.
