greetings from the critique club!
I think this is a fun, funny image with a playful spirit. For some reason it reminds me of early twentieth century portraits, when certain conventions were going out the window. There's also a certain stiffness and flatness that reminds me of that era. I think a lot of that has to do with the mouth and some of it has to do with the lighting.
The Mouth
The bright lipstick plus what looks like motion blur on the tongue creates a caricatured sort of effect. One is reminded of the Rolling Stones. The rest of the face is oddly relaxed compared to the frantic activity of the tongue. The face loses its visual cohesion, similar to a Cubist painting. A fascinating effect. I find myself compensating by looking deeply into the eyes and wondering if there is another emotion there that the mouth is obscuring.
The Lighting
You do have shadows "sculpting" the face, but also large highlighted areas, so the effect is very 3-dimensional but also flat at the same time. Once again, Cubism is a good comparison. The neutral midtone of the background does nothing to make the face stand out, but then you have the wonderful framing shapes of blouse, hair and hat that call almost as much attention to themselves as the subject. It is this dismantling of the subject that is so frowned upon at DPC and yet is so photographic in essence. The only way for a photographer to be an artist is to interact with the subject of the photo in ways such as the above.
If you want higher scores you're asking the wrong person (oh, that's right. you didn't ask me. bad luck of the draw, sorry!), but I will offer one piece of sage scoring advice: DPC voters like to be stroked, not tongued. |
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