Bean and Vegetable Still Life

TMax 100, Canon TLb. Comments and critique welcome.

Drew

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...tStillLife.jpg

Hmmmm. This may be better in color, particularly with an eggplant.

The picture is very flat. You need a lot more contrast. A red or yellow filter during the shot or in the darkroom may help this. Maybe increase the DOF so that the bottle is clearer. The garlic clove is distracting because there is no detail. I thought it was cotton at first. And finally, I think that having the beans spill out of the picture may be a mistake. It draws the eye out of the photo.

Drew,

I like the beans spilt and really the composition as a whole is very good.

However, technically as Todd has already pointed out there are a few problems. I agree with this would be better in Colour.

However, the black and white version there is not enough contrast in the picture it just looks a little washy if you get my drift. Also there seems to be a softness to the photo which does not match the subject.

There is an edge running from the bottle to the right edge of the photo which I find distracting.

One last thing is that I am unsure whether I would want the beans cut off or in full view. I think I would need to see both before making the decision.

I think the composition as it stands would be better in color, but then again i think alot could be improved about the composition to make it more appearling in either black and white or color.

I fee lyou needs to find a focus in this image, alot of the objects have potential but you need to change your composition and lighting to highlight them.

I recomend you ue a higher appature on a clamped exposure to esure a better depth of field, i would also recomend artificial lighting of some description, experiment with the different forms you have from an object, try and achieve interesting curvatures through both negative and positivie space.

Create pattern and texture with the beans more noticabely, try some frames closer to the subject matter. Reposition the garlic also, it like the backing is white so it kind of seeps into the image, i think there is alot of surface detail you have lost on the garlic and other objects which you could pick up if you used a longer exposure.

Dont think of the objects as what they are think of them as objects which you can use to create visualy appealing forms, this is especially important in still life as it is not the objects themselves that keep people looking at a still life image but the compositional and tonal strengths of a photograh.

Sorry bit long winded :), by the way if you print in the dark room try out Ilford fiber based paper, realllly nice stuff that.

Laurie Priest