Preparation

[madshutterbug]

Today's entry is preparation work for next month's Camera Club competition. I'm embarking on another experiment here, to provide you folks with time to kick me some on whether the image works or not. Camera Club allows me to enter a total of six photos into the critique/competition: 2 in Colour, 2 in Monochrome, and 2 in Creative (Non-photo-realistic). The theme for next month is 'Mirror', looking to get both the reflecting surface and the subject reflected into the photograph.

Comments

[neolithicsheep]

Hrm. I find it a little busy for monochrome, lacking color to separate the various bits it ends up looking kind of jumbled. If it were me (and I am no serious student of photography, and you already pretty well know where my tastes vary from yours, heh) what I would do is crop it down to tighten the focus on the mirror ball, and bump up the contrast a little to make things pop a little more.

...I've added my suggested crop on the Flickr image, in case you have a burning desire to see it! ;)

[neolithicsheep]

Added a 2nd suggested crop, as I pondered the image a little more OH GOD I SHOULD BE IN BED.

[barry-king.livejournal.com]

Nice overall image, very good use of texture and light. Pretty broad midtonal range, though. Can you compensate for levels, or is that verboten for this competition?

[dianavilliers.livejournal.com]

I take it you want some critique, then?

One thing that I've noticed you do quite frequently is to try and stuff too much into one frame, and you're doing just that here.

You've got two reflecting surfaces (tick box for theme relevance) and quite a lot of busy (too busy perhaps, but it could possibly be persuaded to work) textures for them to be relecting. The number one problem I see here is that the ball and the pond are not relating to each other at all.

Without the ball the pond is just a pond. Pretty, reflective, but ultimately pretty meh.

The ball is by far the more interesting reflector, being that it is so totally out of place in the bush, but it's hanging in mid air and not clearly relecting what it is hanging off. I want to see it touching and being touched by it's surroundings. Ideally I'd want to see it reflecting the pond the pond and vice versa.
If it were mine, I'd also try to make a whole lot of the background clutter -go away- either by choice of angle or a really shallow DOF.

JMHO, worth what you paid for it...

[firesmithsghost.livejournal.com]

uh, hmmmm, I can't even try to add a comments like the others but I do like the photo.

[slave2tehtink.livejournal.com]

I see that everyone said the same thing here that I did on DW! I feel better now, knowing it was not just me.