Lunch

Critiques [Translate]

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• rychousmama (228)
• [2007-06-20 17:03]

Hi Nathan, welcome to TL! Really good try at this shot and I like the higher point of view as well as the placement of the food for this still life. It creates a strong composition and each element balances with the other. I would have removed that little plate with the pink objects at the left edge though, as it is a bit distracting. I would also recommend using a faster shutter speed to avoid camera shake. Even when one uses a tripod the camera itself can still budge slightly when one is pushing the shutter button, I would know I sometimes get camera shake when using a tripod because of that :P So make sure that you really try to not budge the camera too much when pressing the shutter button. Also, avoid having any of the subjects, such as the cutting board below, the bread at the left, and the butter and salt and pepper shakers at the right touching the edge or partially cropped. That tends to break the unity and continuity of the shot, especially because this is supposed to be a still life. Okay, post-processing tips, which will also address your question about the reflection: 1. you can probably either clone out the reflection using the clone-stamp tool in Photoshop (if that's what you use and you are allowed to use these tools for the competition), selecting the tones of one tone or part of wood and just cloning it into the rest of the reflection OR you could try to get an off-white or neutral-colored poster board or paper and stick it onto the wall in the background so that any reflection will look even. In fact, you could even just place all these still life objects onto a nice deep green or purple (or whatever color you want) cloth, crinkled a bit, and covering the wall a bit too. Number 2: I would use the color balance in your editing program to take out the yellow color cast in the shot, or just adjust the white balance setting on your camera (to "incandescent"- it might have a light bulb symbol with it) to avoid the color cast. Hope that helped. Thanks for sharing!
-Lara