Rain Drops on Cherry Blossomby
bgmorrisComment by stephan: Greetings from the Critique Club, Ben :)
Compositon: You did a very good job regarding the background. It's nicely blurred and doesn't distract from your subject. The horizontal orientation of the twig looks a bit boring. A diagonal orientation can be more dynamic in my opinion. Especially when the twig would point to the viewer, the DOF would give a better impression of depth.
Lighting: Exposure is good but personally I would have inceased the contrast a little bit in postprocessing. It looks a bit bland now. But it's good that you didn't wait until sun came out again. The cloudy sky made an uniform lighting with almost no shadows. I think sharp shadows wouldn't fit to your subject.
Focus: As I said above: good DOF, but personally I would prefer a different angle of the twig using this DOF better and giving the photo more depth. I'm unsure whether the photo would look better when all the flowers and twig would be in focus and not only the middle part. But I think not.
Challenge: I don't think it conveys the challenge theme very good. The rain drops almost aren't visible. Without the title one wouldn't have noticed them. Thus the photo looks more like a classic flower photo.
Creativity: Please don't take it as an offense, but to me the photo is not very inspiring. It has nothing special on it. I liked your previous entry to the Cliche challenge much more.
Good luck for your future submissions!
Photographer found comment helpful.