I am always in constant flux, so I learn very little from my mistakes because once I finish something I am into something else. But I am certain that many of you can learn from my mistakes in DPC.
Take the desaturation challenge. My thinking went like this. Select a difficult to light subject at a slight angle to make the desat area an irregular ellipse. I selected a saxophone and desaturated the bell. Done. I was green and one comment came from Lauriel in which she stated that the reflection on the bell was not attractive. Well, I was floored at first, because here I give a first rate exposure and good desat....
Ahh, I overlooked the end result. While the feat is important and it is the heart of the challenge, I overlooked making the image complete. She was right. Lesson here: do not think you are finished because you met the challenge and overcomed the execution steps. Your image must be complete and who could describe complete? I contend an image is never finished...but we must move on. So, I was happy with my execution, but I overlooked the aesthetic end result.
My biggest mistake was with the mirrors. I made a very good image, but it had a slightly confusing look since it leaned on the abstract. I decided to change it. New idea. Take a Disco Ball and treat it with special lighting. You know, these balls are all mirrors. here I get carried away with color lights upon color lights...so many I even busted one. Well, I was happy with the end result....but member after member sludged hammered the image down and I believe it ended up 4 or 5 from the brown ribbon. What went wrong here?
Simple: a wonderfully lit ball but that was the full wad. The image has no compositional value. There is no tension and no extension beyond the subject. You see, twice I was side tracked with the intial lovely image of my lit ball with not the slightest attention to composition and worst, no attention to its final presentation. The work out wuth the light concept left me blind. Lesson: remember, you are creating an image that will get checked over and over by viewer after viewer and they all can easily see what you overlooked. Again, after you finish your image look at it and ask yourself the question what can a commentator say to throw a cold tower on my creation.
Look and look at your image and most important make sure that the image is as complete as it needs to be in order to compete.
I will add to this thread as I believe it may be of some help to those aspiring a good image. |
