I took this at my office this afternoon. This is my first challenge submission, so I'm mostly submitting it for critiques, but it would be cool to get something other than last place :)
Haha, yeah, 1st entry....brown ribbon. In my defense I just got photoshop yesterday & didn't know how to remove the flash at the time of submission, oh well, guess there's no where else to go but up right? :)
Statistics
Place: 101 out of 102 Avg (all users): 4.0169 Avg (commenters): 4.0000 Avg (participants): 3.8800 Avg (non-participants): 4.0709 Views since voting: 758 Views during voting: 278 Votes: 177 Comments: 7 Favorites: 0
Subject matter: is that Barney? I think the idea isn't bad, but:
-Would've been better if it was obviously a famous cuddly toy
-The sunglasses should at least roughly stay on properly
-As someone commented on already, cuddly toys don't really tend to do well on DPC. It's just one of those things.
Composition: I think the crop is too tight, and the central composition isn't great either. I would've gone for a slightly to the right side positioning, leaving a bit of space above the head and to the left. The line in the background is also distracting - try and use a plain one colour background with no distractions for shots like these.
Lighting: flash is too strong. If you don't have the equipment (I don't), you can arrange table lamps and make them bounce off white pieces of cardboard (diffusing the light gets rid of the rough glare). That way you get a bit too much red in the pictures (because it's only normal yellowy lightbulbs rather than white flash light), but you can get rid of that in post-processing.
Post-processing: use a cloning tool to get rid of the flash. Also, I'm not sure black and white actually works well for this picture - B&W tends to be good for simulating an old feel, or for pictures where there's lots of grays and nice shadows, it kind of looks pretty and elegant. In this case, I don't think the subject matter justifies it. At least in colour, there would have been the bright colour of the toy to indicate pop-stardom, whereas this way that gets lots.
Anyway, that's all I can think of. Hope that helps. Any questions, just message me.
Don't get discouraged, keep on shooting, and I look forward to seeing your score climb higher and higher :)
You can do it Kelly! I am going to get the brown ribbon on the current free study, so don't worry about a thing! Team NOOB unite! Haha! You will go up even though it is frustrating now. :)
Cute idea, but stuffed animals don't always do well here - I know, I've tried. It's a bit bright, probably due to a flash, but in a way that suits your title pretty well.
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
