"This is Charlie Company...Send Reinforcements!!!"by
rayg544Comment by tyrkinn: *** Greetings from the Critique Club ***
Challenge
This shot meets the challenge in my opinion. However as many point out the smoke turns more to a haze rather than obvious smoke. I think that rather than almost killing yourself with that cigar you should have tried to make smoke from your little fires on the set. Incent (these smoking-stick-thingies?) in one or two places could have done the trick (might be hard to make work though).
Composition
Composition is good, I would have cropped a bit less aggressive on the right side to show the whole lower trooper. Balance is good, the slope from left to right works good and the placement of the soldiers is good.
Lighting
Lighting is even and the exp. is good. Shadows on soldiers give them great contrast.
Camera work
Good camera work. DOF is nice and wide and you captured the fire nicely.
Post-Processing
As I said the cropping is a bit tight on the right. Cigar-haze takes a bit from the contrast, isolated smoke and more contrast would be better. Wonder how b/w version would look like?
Title and Info
Title is good, and your provided info is good, on shots like this it is neccesary to tell people how you set it up (for instance how you made the smoke)
Overall (my opinion)
This shot is good, but lacks what people call the wow factor. I think if you would have made the smoke more isolated to parts of the image it would have scored higher. Maybe a few more soldiers would help as well.
Hopes this helps in some way, good luck in the future.
Best regards, Tyrkinn
Photographer found comment helpful.