Is there a card in your deck that fortells that you will get a new camera? I have read in the forums that yours is a (forgive the expression) crappy camera. However, you can't hide behind that as an excuse. WHen I click on the camera name in yor profile, it brings up a bunch of very nice photos taken with the camera. And lo! many of them are in focus. I think the lesson here is that a photographer should know his equipment and understand st's strengths and weakenesses.
Here you have tried to take a shot that is beyond your camera's ability to focus. Clearly you are frustrated that your designs cannot be executed, but that is not an excure for submitting an out of focus picture. Look at Lisa's with the bread dough, camera won't focus? create a motion blur. Your own yellow photo is quite sharp. Can't take a low light photo? Then don't. Just as a gallery show is only as good as it's worst piece, a photo is only as good as it's worst part. Your focus problem is compounded by your choice to include printed words. Humans have an uncontrollable desire to be able to read what they see. There was recently a glorious photo of a road winding off into the mist that got panned because the road sign was in arabic and many viewers complained that they couldn't read it. Photography is a sport that needs an audience, therefore to be effective it has to pander to some of the biological brain functions of it's viewers. I spent far too long trying to figure out what the picture on the card is. It looks like a vampire leaning over the shoulder of the PlayBoy bunny with floppy ears and a bow tie.
Now lets say, for the sake of arguement that the photo was in focus, even what we sometimes incorrectly refer to as soft focus (ie, only a little out of focus) then the rest of the elements here are very nice.
This is a carefully crafted composition. Here are the parts that I like, in no particular order:
The colors - are great, the blood red cards, black background, white text and figures with just a splash of blue to help draw attention to the vampire. I love the way the black pattern on the cards is blened with the background so that the swirls and edges of the face down cards make an abstract design, and the way the face up card has no substance, just an image on the black.
The lines - are stunning. The strong straight black lines point out into the empty, dangerous black nothing space (I can't agree with the commenter who said there was too much negative space). Those strong lines are mirrored by the whilte lines formed by the text. One set tilts right, the other tilts left. And the little figures in the text, are they leaves? mirror the larger swirlies on the cards. The black on red swirls also point into the void, even more seductively that the straight lines. But luckily the cross hatches on the leaves bring me back, saying "maybe not, don't know". That vampire is a trick image for me, yesterday I figured out what it was and thought ah ha. But today it has turned back into the bunny. The vampire leans towards the void but the bunny just looks silly.
Composition - very nice - lower third is all red, left third has the vampire card, That leaves to upper four ninths deep black. The black negative space is an equal player in the scene, it has to be larger to balance out the visual attractiveness of the red and black patterns which in turn have to be larger than the representational image of the vampire and the words. You have created a perfectly balanced picture according to how the human visual system works.
So keep saving your pennies for that new camera. This is a "could have been great" image but I, for one, can't forgive the lack of focus. It seems like cheating to whine about the camera.
Now the disclaimer: Please remember that this is just my own opinion and I am NOT an expert by any standard.
An aside note about your Stock photo which I like very much: When my Dad died last year my mother was being picky about the urn to bury his ashes in. She said "Henry would have liked something like this sake bottle he brought back from Japan". In the end we made a paper funnel and poured him into that sake bottle, sealed him in with sealing wax and planted him with a stone lantern as a marker.
Whats this doing all the way down here! I thought that it was really cool, very abstract but excellent colours, composition and it's original! You never can tell what is going to work with the voters!
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