Ovation Guitar
by mic

Comment by vawendy:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Comment:
Greetings from Andi via the Critique Club

First Impression: I like the idea, but the shot seems kind of busy to me.

Composition: The composition is good, and I think it works well for rule of thirds. However, as you mentioned, the lights in the background are distracting. Two things I can think of that might have helped. First of all, I noticed that your aperture was set to 5.6. I might have experimented with a 3.5 aperture to fuzz the background even more. Light backgrounds aren't really that much of a problem, it's the fact that there are so many light spots in it. Opening the aperture and blurring them more might make it a little less busy.

Second idea: I could be wrong, but it looks like there are other guitars hanging behind this one. If that's the case, I'd try stepping to the left more for the shot. This way, you'd still have the front guitar as the main interest, but instead of the bright lights, you could have guitars fading into the distance. (Unless I'm wrong about more guitars :D

Technical: There's not a lot that you can do in basic editing. But there are, again, two options that I can think of. If you are using Photoshop, have you tried the shadows/highlights command? The main thing it does is to lighten the shadows, but you can pull that slider back to save all the shadows, but it does have the option to darken highlights. The other option is to shoot in RAW mode. Then you can adjust the exposure and try to recover the blown highlights. Feel free to PM me if you need anymore information on those two options.

Final thoughts: I think you did a nice job on this one. IMO, one of the reasons that it didn't score higher was because the subject chosen was interesting, but not very interesting. I like the choice to show just part of the guitar, but it's not something that's going to evoke much emotion in people. You're getting the hard parts down: the composition, getting better with the technicals. Now in your next challenge, find a subject that makes you think "oh wow!". Congrats on your personal best!

Ovation Guitar
by mic

Comment by Yo_Spiff:
Nice use of ambient lighting, and I really like the composition of this shot.

Ovation Guitar
by mic

Comment by DCNUTTER:
Very cool shot.

Ovation Guitar
by mic

Comment by RaeRae67:
Ovations rule

Mosquito Killer
by mic

Comment by JulietNN:
Hi from the C Club,

You asked for an indepth review of your shot in this challenge.

First off, good idea! YOu are nicely sharpened on the main focal point in your shot. Your colours are good too,

I scored fairly low on this shot in the challenge and here are the reasons why.

I think this could have been shot just a little bit more diffently to give it more interest. In teh comments, this has been addressed too. Having the shot not in the center helps. Here is one I did of your shot (completely illegal though as I cloned. Now as you can see, with this being off center, it does actually draw your eye more to the subject and check it out some more. It gets rid of the white brightness at the top of your shot. Having a black piece of cloth or paper behind this would have helped with that brightness as well and given you a more solid background. Play around with angles when you are shooting something, shoot with it in the corners with lots of negative space, zoom right in etc etc.

The smoke that is coming out is also interesting in this shot and with a darker background would have stood out more.

All in all, you did well

Message edited by author 2009-08-27 12:48:43.

Ovation Guitar
by mic

Comment by retiredPhil:
My eye went to what looks like a sound hole, and only later went to the pearl inlay.

Mosquito Killer
by mic

Comment by bvlindalou:
good POV

Mosquito Killer
by mic

Comment by jessielude:
Lacks interest... Needs a dead mosquito in it so the title doesn't describe it.
Perhaps filling the screen with it with the smoke against a dark backdrop.

Mosquito Killer
by mic

Comment by Alex_Europa:
I don't like the bulls-eye composition and I wish that this was cropped much tighter.

Shinedown
by mic

Comment by Ecce_Signum:
Greetings from Andi via the Critique Club and congratulations on entering your first challenge here at dpc! (FWIW my first score was a 4.2). In case you were wondering the Critique Club is made up of a group of dpchallenge members but each critique is written by an individual not the group.

First Impression: Not heard of the band before and understand the link between title and image however its not a particularly inspiring image for me.

Composition: Whilst there isn't much to look at here it still appears quite busy, it needs roatating a touch to straighten it and thinking if you had turned to the right some more you would have lost the left building and might have improved the overall feel of the image.

Subject: Whilst you met the challenge there is nothing in the image that I can settle on and keep moving from the blown out sky to the rock at the bottom and distracted by the buildings on both sides.

Technical: OK, the overexposure was important for the challenge, to have scored any better you would have needed to keep colour and detail in the tree and its all a little washed out. As this is the only image you have here its difficult to understand your level of both photography or post processing, either way you will always get great help/tips/critique by posting an image in the individual photograph section of the site.

Final thoughts: Lets call this a benchmark shot for future challenges and since you placed 100th I guess the only way is up. Keep shooting, reading and learning and best of luck for future challenges!