The poem is ‘The Tyger’ (no, not a typo but the way it is spelt in my book) by William Blake.
I really suck at high key (and low key) as I don’t really know what I’m doing. I feel I need some filters to try and help me with this. Some filters for soft focusing would be nice too. In stead I covered my lens with three layers of clear plastic cling wrap (Glad Wrap). My cat was asleep on a white sheet with a bright door in the background but I had little room to position myself well. Overall I think this shot has failed but because I tried to achieve a couple of photographic styles out of my comfort zone I have still entered it with the hope of getting some valuable criticisms.
Thank you JamesDowning for the great critique. Some wonderful insight, intelligent suggestions and appreciated praise. The considerable effort you have taken to critique this image for me is greatly appreciated.
Statistics
Place: 49 out of 57 Avg (all users): 4.7595 Avg (commenters): 7.0000 Avg (participants): 5.1724 Avg (non-participants): 4.5200 Views since voting: 503 Views during voting: 170 Votes: 79 Comments: 10 Favorites: 0
I think you did a great job with a difficult challenge topic. I, too, am not greatly familiar with high-key photography. In fact, I ended up skipping this challenge. I now wish I hadn't, but I didn't have much time. Anyways, I certainly appreciate your sense of photographic adventure here, so I'll try to learn something too right along with you through my critique.
High key by definition is "a photograph ... featur[ing] a diminished tonal range of primarily whites and light grays." So right off the bat, you may have turned away some voters by retaining some deeper greys and even (it seems) some black in the cat's coat. I personally don't think it's a big issue though. With high key photos, a few very small areas of black can really bring interest and drama to the photo. However, is drama what you wanted to introduce here? Your cat is shown in her/his comfy zone. So drama might not need to be included here. More than anything, I think you're showing her in "heavenly comfort". You're putting emphasis on the cat's ability to be 100% comfortable when sleeping on any surface. So I wonder what the effect of further lightening up the cat would be (bringing up the black limit to grey)? It might create more of the picture of heavenly comfort that you wish to convey.
The other half of the challenge was blur, or soft focus. The cling wrap did seem to provide an interesting effect. By the comments below from the more artistic side of the community, it must have been successful in their eyes. But they tend to really appreciate the "different". I imagine you could have gotten a similar effect by just focusing past the cat, but it might not have provided the same 'halo' effect that your glad wrap did. I applaud your attempts at something different, and I think it was appropriate for this different challenge.
I think I understand why you chose the title you did, but it did seem to turn some off, based on the comments below. I see it as literally communicating the high key photo as "burning bright". Is there something deeper? I'm not sure. Honestly I'm not much of a literary buff, and always had a hard time reading past the literal meaning of the words. So I'm admittedly not much use there.
The last critique I would suggest is trying something with the crop. The negative space is welcome on this challenge, but the bokeh'd section of the body isn't really necessary nor communicated. Visually I tried a nearly square crop using my hands, taking off an inch or so of the cat body and a bit off the far side of the frame. It put the my focus more on the cat's nose, buried in the sheets. It still communicated everything the current picture does, but put special focus on the cat's contentedness.
The Tyger William Blake..Very intimately related to this author as I had to write a paper on him for my final last semester in comp 2. Nice shot. like the negative space.
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
