Congratulations to Naomi whose
Between Friends image won the vote for
People's Choice and was selected
Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit. This is a great image that just makes me smile whenever I look at it. The highlights were a little overexposed in this image; however, I can overlook that when the image makes me smile. One way to evaluate how well the image fits the assignment is to look at each image and come up with your own captions. If the caption that pops into your head matches the assignment topic, then the artist/photographer has successfully composed the image to convey the intended meaning.
Between Friends is one of those images. "Sharing" immediately comes to mind when I view the image.
Between Friends
I've awarded
Editor's Choice for Technical Merit to Sue's
57 Year Anniversary Celebration image. Sue did an excellent job balancing the flash and ambient exposure for this image. She also did a great job controlling the depth of field for this image. I like that the crystal and champagne bottle are within the depth of field, and the roses are "softly" focused. The soft focus on the roses gives a pleasing background that provides context without being too distracting. I suspect that if the roses were in sharp focus, they would steal too much attention from the foreground objects and become a distraction.
57 Year Anniversary Celebration
This was a great image; however, here are a few small critiques and suggestions on how it could have been just a little bit stronger. One distraction is that the bottom of the champagne glass on the right is cut off. I'll give Sue the benefit of the doubt and assume she was cropping out some other distracting element by cropping so close on the right. Be careful when photographing objects that lead diagonally out of the image (like the champagne glass on the right) since they can act as "leading lines" that lead the viewer right out of the image. It is better to have diagonals that lead into the image whenever possible. I might have tried composing this image with the two champagne glasses "standing together" on the left, with the champagne bottle on the right of the image and turned slightly towards the center. Remember that your images can be full of symbolism, and in this case, the symbolism that you want to convey is "unity" and "sharing." Having champagne in the glasses might have also helped to emphasize the theme of "sharing."
Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Sharing" assignment. Several of the images made me smile, which is a great indication that they were successful at "evoking an emotional response in the viewer."
