The first thing that strikes me about this shot is that it's dominated by the 'western' theme, and the 'arabian' part is relegated to just a corner of the shot. Since you were trying to express the strangeness of the two being together, it would have helped if the image was more evenly balanced between the two themes. It's also not clear at first glance that the headband of the kaffia is what it is - I initially assumed it was a whip (due to the predominant cowboy imagery), and only worked it out on closer inspection.
One thing thing I do like about the composition is the positioning of the hat, since its really picked up the light well, and the brim leads the eye around nicely. However, on the lefthand side, it merges into the highlights of the gun barrel, which in turn merges into the bottom of the shot, leading the eye round the edges of the objects, rather than into them.
Oh, I must say that the colours in this shot are superb, with the vibrant reds & whites really contrasting well against the light brown of the hat - after all, DPC voters (in general) like bold colours like this :o)
Background:
The solid black of this background means that the objects in shot are the main focal points, and there's nothing to distract from that. However, since both the gun handle and the kaffia's headband are black, they merge into the background and aren't as distinct as they could have been - perhaps a lighter colour background would have helped give more contrast.
Camera Work:
Focus and DoF is surprisingly good in this shot, considering it was done at F2.0. The lighting is also reasonably good, since the texture on the hat is very clear. However, your positioning of the gun has meant that the majority of it is in shadow - maybe an additional lightsource or moving the gun round would help in this case.
Post-Processing:
Since you've not provided any details, I can only guess as to what post processing (if any) that you have done to this shot. I'd guess that you've sharpened the focus, which helps this shot. However, two important things have been overlooked - firstly, the image doesn't hit the 640 pixels maximum in either dimension, so the image here is smaller than it could have been. The other thing is that the shot is only 68Kb, which is a long way short of the 150Kb maximum - the smaller the filesize, the more compressed the image is, and thus more detail is lost, so I'd recommend that you try to get as close to the 150Kb line as possible. This loss of detail is evident in the "jaggies" on the gun, for example.
One other thing I'd suggest is that you consider using a border of some sort, as this can really help an image - there are many examples of photos with borders in these challenges if you want some ideas :o)
My Opinion:
Personally, I feel that this shot had a good idea behind it, but didn't sell it to it's full potential, which is a shame. The objects and focus are great, but the composition doesn't hit the mark, for me anyway, so I'd rate this as an average to above average shot.
This photo just about meets the challenge (for me), but the 'arabian' theme probably needed to be stronger in order to make the strangeness more apparent.
If you've got any questions about this critique, please feel free to contact me via the PM system.
For this photo I used a kaffia, (coffe-ah) a decorative palestian, Arafat style headdress, along with my cowboy hat and gun as props for this shot, had lots of fun shooting it and hoping everyone would see the strangness of this shot. Thanks for your nice comments.
This is a nicely done image, but I'm not sure I really understand the relationship to the challenge from just the image. The title is propping it up just a bit... - setzler
Very well taken shot (well maybe a tad dark, but then the bournouse would be too bright, so pass on that) I get your strange-ness, but I had hoped for more out of this world strange from this challenge. 7 Swash
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