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KitaComment by Prof_Fate: Hello from the Critique Club!
This is a cute idea, but I see issues with the composition and techncial aspects that could use some work. One thing strikes me as terribly wrong - your technical info says ISO 64, i/1 (full second?) shutter speed and a Rebel camera. THe Rebel does not do ISO 64, and there is no way that this was a full second exposure. So this suggests to me you need to go over the very basics of camera useage, your manual and how to read EXIF data - if you don't know what you've done then you can't figure out where you went wrong or what to change and how to improve.
Composition is very centered and static. The white board is very bright and distracting right there in the middle, and it is cropped off at the top which bothers me. The child and animals are in teh rule of thirds positions, which is good, but the staff/pointer could be used much more effectively as a leading line than here where it divides the image in half, and the white BG makes it very prominent. I don't like the wood grained BG on the sides either - very centered and the wood is interesting, so much so that it draws my eye away from the subject, or what should be the subject (the childs' face/expression IMO, as people connect with people better than other items). If his eyes were open/facing the camera a bit it could be better. Perhaps if you had moved left and shot at a slight angle it would be better.
Technically speaking, it has a yellow cast. Unless the child has jaundice, he is a bit yellow. The Auto WB on the rebel is good. If i had to guess why the yellow cast...flash and incandescent light with a slow shutter speed. The WB will be set for flash (daylight) and the room lights are incadescent (yellow ish) and the slow shutter speed lets that show through. The proper fix is not to mix light types. Options are more flash to over power the room lights, turn off the room lights, change the room lights to macth the flash, gel the flash to match the room lights or custom WB. The slightly blurry hand tells me slow shutter speed, but flash usually freezes that..so perhaps i am wrong about the flash? Maybe the white paper fooled the camera's WB.
The image has a too-sharp feel about it, as if USM was used incorrectly. DOF - here i am back at the wood grain. if it was 3 or 4 feet back from the subject/white board then it would be slightly OOF and command less of a presence in the image.
I hope you find this helpful. I too am trying to learn and be better photographer. Once you get past the technical aspects (which are cut and dried for the most part) then you can work on the artistic part and make my job that much harder LOL
Photographer found comment helpful.
