Greetings from the Critique Club!
Heh, well I almost guessed straight off the bat what this was, my first guess was some sort of handmade Christmas ornament :-) I had hermit crabs as pets when I was a kid. (Not very cuddly, but fun to watch.) Anyway, a good image that meets the challenge requirements, it's both a thought-out macro and the pattern of the shell definitely give that abstract quality.
Like you said, the devil is in the hotspots from your light sources. It looks like 2-3 directional lights aimed at the shell; I also used to use floods simply because I had nothing else to use. If you're stuck with only an on-camera flash, wrapping it up in many layers of small bubblewrap could have helped to diffuse the light so it wouldn't have given that *on-camera flash* look.
Otherwise a fine image, and everyone knows that reflective surfaces are the very devil to shoot. But there are ways to do it, I picked up a book called Light: Science and Magic which is a terrific book to help you learn the basics of lighting.
Hope this helps!
Susan |
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