Greetings from the Critique Club!
"Take a photo in which the background is white and the subject is predominately a "light" color."
This type of challenge is always a tough one due to various states of monitor calibrations. Details and shades can disappear in light backgrounds, or appear over-exposed/blown out in the highlights.
Composition:
Your composition pulls the eye right to the main focal point - the burning candle. Perhaps the candle placement was a bit too high in the frame or could have been in the lower right portion. The tip of the flame being cut-off hurts this composition in my opinion. Depth of field places all the items well in focus. Possibly less depth of field would place the outer areas slightly out-of-focus and give it a softer feel on the edges. The arrangement is gentle & tender.
Lighting:
Your subject is well lit with the natural lighting and what appears to be overhead lighting as well, as revealed by the shadows. A softer overhead lighting source would help eliminate the harshness of the shadows, but as we know, professional lighting equipment is expensive.
Post-Processing:
Overall this image is fairly even in levels, with the exception of the flame itself. The faded look here works well to add the soft feel, but somehow believe the voters were looking for a white/non-existant background as described in the challenge details. A central bright area such as the candle makes it very difficult to fade away the outlying areas without hurting the loverall look.
Suggestions/Improvements:
I have a very hard time trying to figure out what could have been done to help this overall and yet stay close to the challenge description. I do however really like this image as a stand-alone shot, adjusted in Photoshop to bring out the details and colors using a basic levels adjustment.
As this is now your second highest scoring image, congrats on improvement. This was a tough challenge for all of us.
I hope this was useful to you, and please feel free to contact me via PM if you have any questions regarding this critique or anything else relating to the site in general.
Regards,
Brad |
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
