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Edited on Fri Sep-10-10 03:21 AM by regnaD kciN
#1
I'm going to agree with Mira here -- as a different look at "flower," it's quite clever, but the alignment (or non-alignment) of the fabric is a problem. More than this, though, when I think of "flower," I think of color -- and the black-and-white nature of this photo really doesn't work for me. If it was a color photo with various multicolored threads in the needlework, I think it would evoke "flower" better...but I get the sense that this particular needlework wasn't multicolored in the first place, so you probably didn't have much of a choice with this.
#2
Nice use of depth-of-field to isolate the figure against the background. Also, a nice use of a figure with bright colors and a mix of rounded textures and diagonal lines versus the more-subdued, up-and-down lines of the books behind it. If I have any criticism of the image, I'm thinking that it would have been better with a tiny bit more depth-of-field -- it seems that the mirror (or whatever) in the character's hand is sharp, as is the hat, but the lower parts of the figure seem slightly soft.
#3
The motion blur here is really appealing and evocative; if I have any critique of that element, it would be that I would have wanted more of it, but I'm not sure your model would have been able to hold the rest of her body still while moving her arm for the slower shutter speed I might have tried. My bigger problem with the image, though, is that I find the colors of the room versus the blue of the fabric rather unappealing, particularly in the mixed lighting of the daylight coming from the left and the incandescent light on the right -- while an adjustment to white balance might have improved it, this might have been the one to consider converting to black-and-white. I might also have tried using a curve adjustment in Photoshop (especially if you were going to B&W) to open up the shadows on your model's face, neck, and left arm. Finally, although others have liked the crop, I'm not in favor of coming in so close as to cut the top of your model's head out of the image (that generally only works when you're doing an extreme close-up of the face; when you've got a portrait extending all the way to a person's waist, I'd make sure to include the top of their head). I should mention, as a matter of qualification, that I'm a notoriously-lousy portrait photographer, so you might want to take my comments with a grain of salt.
#4
This is a winner in all respects. Once again, good use of depth-of-field (and you either shot this with manual focus, or found a good way to trick the camera into focusing on the background -- nine times out of ten, the camera would have automatically focused on the foliage in front and blurred the cat). But, beyond that, there's the composition, and managing to get the eye and the tongue visible through gaps in the foliage; and, for that matter, of the curve in the one branch perfectly matching the cat's eye just below it. I'm not sure you explicitly intended it, but I notice that you also managed to position the cat's eye according to the "rule of thirds" vertically, and the tongue close to the same thirds-line horizontally -- even if you didn't plan it, it was still a good case of subconscious sense of compositional forms. And the dark foliage in the upper left nicely directs the eye toward the cat's head. The only possible recommendation I could make would be a slight saturation boost, particularly in the greens, to give more a sense of being in a jungle or forest. Otherwise, a great job all around.
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