Greetings From the Critique Club
By CLarson557
Hi Doug!
I'm going to start off by saying that I have truely enjoyed studying your photography this morning. When I do critiques for the club, I go back to other pictures the photographer has done to get a feel for him/her as a whole.
Since you have been submitting to DPC for a long time, you have a lot to look at, however you might consider taking advantage of the portfolio feature of this site. I would have liked to see other photos you might have taken outside the challenges. I was impressed with your unique subject matters and camera techniques. You definately have a good eye. Also, I enjoyed the photos with one or both of your kids. They are adorable!
With that said...onto the task at hand.
Challenge: The red and green of the flower definately fits into the challenge. However, I do agree with some of the comments that the yellow color dominates the photo and takes away from the main subject.
Composition: I do kind of like the way the top of the lampshade fades out of the picture, but for this challenge, I think that a tighter crop on the flower would be more appriopriate to get rid of some of the yellow. I think I would have liked to see the subject (the flower) not so centered in the photo. I've noticed that you do have a tendency of centering your subjects, however, with "Three Square" and "Checking the Radius", I think you did do a good job of using the rule of thirds. Using this rule on the flower in the lamp and maybe giving it a different angle, I do believe that it would be more dramatic and interesting.
Technical: I do believe that the technical aspects of this photo are its greatest strength. The lighting and focus is perfect. The dreamy-ness of the frosted glass is nice and the colors are beautiful. The DOF is great. I like how it shows the curvature of the lamp.
Overall: I know this sounds a bit dumb, but when I first saw this photo during the voting phase, I thought of the Wizard of Oz and "Follow the Yellow Brick Road". Therefore, in my eye, my attention went more to the yellow and then, lastly, to the red and greens in the flower. I voted this as a 6...slightly higher than average because of the good technical aspects.
Once again, I've enjoyed this study and I hope you find it helpful.
Connie |