Hi all
Having another go at still life, happy to take crit' as always.
Thank you for looking.
Untitled by
Gavin Wickham, on Flickr
okay, i'll try and give my 2 penn'orth - i've not really read much of anything anyone else has said so apologies if i'm repeating stuff already given.
First of all, I Think it's a nice clean approach - like the "single light" (ok, digguse light source, window or however it was done) - but no obvious faffing and adding back with secondary light sources - maybe judicious use of reflectors here and there - but nothing whatsoever in the lighting that looks "wrong" - while ensuring everything is actually quite high key save the backgroound.
It passes my first "still life" rule as well - there's nothing on the table that's not there to further the story.
As I've already hinted, personally, I'd have liked the cup to have just some clue that it was really there for a reason - making it an "active" part of the picture and story telling by having something... could be anything - could be a teaspoon on the table with tea/coffee marks on it - could be a ring on the table, but my personal fave is the simple "see the tea in the mug"...
while we're on the table - like the choice of white/off-white - but as it stands, it's hard to tell if its white melamine on a cafe table, a VERY well pressed white tablecloth, or (what my mind as a photographer jumps to) just a white paper sheet on a darker table... Ideally, i'd be saying white linen tablecloth - and the giveaway is going to be a woven texture on the white background. Not easy to fake well - easier to actually get the tablecloth and the iron out IMO.
I like the small vase, and the general arrangement of the Daffs - though i'd have been tempted to have physically rotated one of them in the jar so it was more like this...
as that way it wouldn't have cut over the lower bloom, and would have perhaps filled some of the black space between the flower heads.
now, we come to what is in parts my favourite bit of the image... the book and glasses.
Now, I think that it's to me the most marvellous bit of story-telling and something I'm slightly jealous i never thought of...
Whenever I think of Daffs, as a lover of the Lake District, there's always the Wordsworth poem going through my head...
so, what better to use as a visual prop than Wainwrights guide to the Fells - and I can see why you Chose the North Western Fells - for the Yellow Cover details.
Shame of course that the area around Grasmere where the poem was written is in the Central Fells book, but I can see why you'd probably not want the Blue Cover...
the one thing I would like to have seen experimented with is actually rotating the book so that the edges of the cover make leading lines that lead into and toward the flowers and not away, out of frame...
please excuse the absolutely terrible 2 minute photoshop book moving - i'm no digital artist, but just wanted to illustrate what I meant - try not to be put off by the image below - just give it a look with the real props (i'd have shot it myself to show what I meant, but my camera battery is flatter than my singing voice...
I know, perspective's all wrong and so forth, jsut wanted to illustrate the page edges running INTO the picture not out...
sorry if this all seems very negative - it's really, really not - this is probably one of the most enjoyable still life images i've seen on here in years - but I spent best part of a year going down a rabbit-warren on this sort of stuff - I used to take hours / days - occasionally WEEKS over compositions and come out with maybe 10 frames taken... The joy of Still Life is - it's Still - it's not going anywhere, so you CAN take your time - it's not Cartier-Bresson's "Decisive Moment" - its quite the opposite. I used to compose most of my stuff with liveview on the camera and the camera display showing on a 32" TV - i'd be sat in front of the camera, by the props, moving things half a MM one way or the other, or rotating things by a couple of degrees till I was happy. It's the Perfect kind of photography for a OCD Control Freak like me.
Right after a couple of hours of staring at this image - I think I've said all I can for now... I'll have a look at the second shot tomorrow if thats OK...
