Greetings from the Critique Club
by strangeghost
The first three parts of this critique are written based purely on examination of your photo. "Final thoughts" is written after reviewing your score, photographer's comments, and voter comments.
TECHNIQUE
Focus isn't perfect, but it is certainly pretty good and probably adequate. Shooting babies and getting fully sharp shots rarely go together anyway. My biggest criticism of this photo is the predominance of gray tones. Soap bubbles are probably white, so it seems as though you would have had plenty of white and black (eyes, hair) portions of this photo to use as calibration points for a true BW tonal range. I like your decision to go for BW with this shot, but leaving everything in shades of gray leaves the image feeling flat. Though size is probably more of a composition issue, I encourage you to use the full 640 pixel dimensions that DPC allows you. Your photo is going to be noticeably smaller than the other entries, and voters usually chafe at that. Lighting seems to be based on the camera flash, and that's almost never the best. The bubbles have lots of possible texture that will disappear in a head-on flash.
COMPOSITION
Babies are smaller than us, and the natural impulse is always to photograph them from above. This is problematic since none of us, babies included, look best from that "birds' eye" perspective. In your shot, you've captured his forehead pretty well, but his whole face, especially the mouth, are so foreshortened that it's tough to really relate to the face. And in babies, lets "face" it, the face is where all the action is. Bring your camera down to his eye level. Lean over the side, get in the tub with him. Set your tripod up in the water (kidding, don't know if I'd do this). Above all, get him to look at the camera. Get him to laugh, to stare in wonder, to hold a bubble in his hand and experience the wonder of life. DPC baby shots fall into two broad categories; quick snaps and wonderful expressions of the world of the child. Unfortunately, this one belongs to the former group.
EMOTIONAL IMPACT
As with all baby shots, the parents and other loved ones usually have the strongest emotional connection, and often fail to see that their shot is not a great one. This shot was a great idea, and had great potential for the challenge topic, but didn't live up to that potential.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Your commenters saw some nice things, but also briefly pointed out some of the shortcomings. Your final score of 5.0 is pretty good, given the technical and compositional problems. Look over some of the higher scoring child and infant shots on this site, and get a flavor for what I'm referring to above. If I were you, I'd reshoot this with some of those ideas in mind. It would be a killer shot and one you'd be happy to share with the relatives. |
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