This shot was another one that took a fair amount of time to setup, the first shoot saw some nice pics but I realised very soon that people thought the image needed rotating so we tried to emphasize that this is the correct orientation by using the hair falling down. So we did a reshoot, the hair effect was done by carefully tieing white cotton to each of my daughters hair and using loads (and I mean LOADS) of hairspray to get the look just right as their hair is really thin this took absolutely ages.
Lighting wise there is a window to camera left offering a nice diffused light which I controlled by opening / closing the curtains as required. A softbox flash head camera right and a reflector was used to bounce some of the light in to the three models. The back was lit by natural light coming through our double patio doors which had a white sheet draped in front of them and further blown out by a flash head pointed high at the ceiling to bounce back down behind th emodels.
My eldest daughter had just come out of a very nasty bout of Tonsilitis so holding that pose for any length of time was a problem so we did lots of shots with rest in between.
Statistics
Place: 35 out of 126 Avg (all users): 5.8203 Avg (commenters): 6.3750 Avg (participants): 5.5370 Avg (non-participants): 6.0270 Views since voting: 1395 Views during voting: 327 Votes: 128 Comments: 13 Favorites: 0
I think you were in a no win situation. With the rotation to create the 3, you loose some of the impact of a great family shot and the wise monkey expressions. Without the rotation, you don't really have the 3. I'd worry less about the score and give myself a pat on the back for a beautifully composed, well lit shot.
In response to your request for further critique...
...as I mentioned during the challenge, the "3" was not obvious as first look. I note that I wasn't the only commenter to say this. I think that rotating the image this was was clever in that it formed a "3" but it distracted us from all the other elements of the shot. I have to admit that I read the title and saw the shot and once I "got" the "3" I never really saw the details such as the tongue poking out. I think that if you look at the "Avg (commenters)" score of 6.37 you'll have an idea what this shot may have scored if it wasn't rotated - just MHO ;)
I have to admit, my first thought was "oops, they forget to rotate the shot" but then I got the "3" shape, I hope other voters are a bit "quicker" than me to get it
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
