Temperance and Justice Tarotby
HuskysibeComment by ambaker: Critique Club Review:
Color Saturation and Hue: Colors are good, and after reading the photographer's comments, the hue works for what he was going for.
Brightness and Contrast: The brighter highlight areas are starting to burn out and have lost detail. Shadow areas have good detail, and could withstand going a bit darker to eliminate the burnout of the highlights.
Focus and depth of field: Focus is nice and sharp. Depth of field is about as good as you could accomplish in this image. I don't think f3.5 would have done much more for you.
The biggest problem I see here, is the lack of a strong subject. The hair in front of the girl's face, tends to diminish it. If you were going for the face, the cards compete. If you were going for the cards, what is visible of her face competes. Also her face is almost dead center of the frame. A no-no of the rule of thirds crowd. Rules are made to be broken, but you do so at the risk of your score. There should be an overriding reason to center the subject.
If you were going for a candle lit effect, I think the scene is a bit bright. Even though this is a basic editing challenge, you can play with brightness, contrast, and saturation, among other things.
The background also competes. The case behind the girl and the red item in the case, are still strong enough to compete.
The plain wall to the left of the girl would work much better as a back drop. For this image, if you darken it some and reduce the contrast a bit, and reduce the saturation, I think you will find it looks more candle lit,the detail in the highlights will come back, and the attention will shift to the cards. As a bonus, the background will also be minimized.
You have some good ideas here, I like the colors, and the theme. Hope to see your work in another challenge soon.
Photographer found comment helpful.