Aiden Michael
by arron_christensen

Comment by photoboy19:
Cool

Message edited by author 2020-10-03 19:30:36.

A 2006 Vintage Australian Wine
by arron_christensen

Comment by duartix:
Greetings from the Critique Club ;)

Artistic Merit
Pros:
* Good contrast between light/dark, subject/background.
Cons:
* Not enough space for the subject to breathe. A looser crop with all the grapes included and with a bit more space on top of the bottle would benefit the composition IMHO.
* A triangular arrangement of the grapes (with the base on the table) would have been much more stable.
* A whole cluster without loose grapes would have shown more care with the setup and look more natural (this arrangement shows that is was prepared).

Technical Merit
Pros:
* Exposure is spot on.
* Focus is spot on.
* WB is spot on, I don't know if a warmer tone might have worked also.
Cons:
* Lighting needs much improvement. This kind of setup craves for soft light (ideally window light). The apparent use of flash left hard reflexes on all subjects and hard shadows on the grapes.

Emotional Merit
Pros:
* Interesting contrast of subjects: grapes/wine, before/after.
* A much more interesting contrast for me is an Antipodean coincidence, unfortunatelly it will escape 99.9% of the viewers. I would never guessed there was an Australian Wine based on a Portuguese grape variety (Verdelho). BTW, I'm Portuguese. ;)
Cons:
* The grapes and the wine aren't as objectively related as this is a white whine are the grapes are red.

Result
I guess what let you down in the challenge was a combination of composition, arrangement and lighting, where the composition played a smaller role and lighting the bigger one. As you might have noticed, the competition in this challenge was fearless and the top of the pack photographers made almost no mistakes with those issues which in Still Life are paramount.
For the emotional value, I would have scored this picture between 6*-7* according to the overall level.

Keep them coming!
All the best
Duarte Bruno

Message edited by author 2010-02-21 06:11:07.

A 2006 Vintage Australian Wine
by arron_christensen

Comment by glad2badad:
Simple and overall an "ok" presentation. Silly perhaps, but one of the things that jumped out at me when I first saw this photo is that the bottle seems to be tilting right. Angle of the camera maybe? Anyway...good luck in the challenge.

A 2006 Vintage Australian Wine
by arron_christensen

Comment by npasel:
Cheers! Pretty still life.

zoom-zoom
by arron_christensen

Comment by Ja-9:
and I like the smile on the driver!!

zoom-zoom
by arron_christensen

Comment by Leo:
Its a nice shot showing motion. The car is nice and crisp. I think it would have worked better if you had composed the car going into the frame, as opposed to driving out of the frame. just my opinion though.

zoom-zoom
by arron_christensen

Comment by hotpasta:
good movement...

Mazda RX-8. It Moves You.
by arron_christensen

Comment by WickedSound:
Well captured shot! Good focus on the car and the road looks great. Also, like your slogan. Nice touch.

Mazda RX-8. It Moves You.
by arron_christensen

Comment by HeiSch:
very well done: motion blur, car in focus, a little reflection of the sky in the windshield, still being able to see the driver, bold colors. all of that creates an emotion of races and speed. well done

Mazda RX-8. It Moves You.
by arron_christensen

Comment by neophyte:
The photo is spectacular. comp works well for text placement. However, the text you chose is a bit hard to read. With a different font this could be a viable ad.