Clash of Civilizations

[DownByFive]

First off, I have no experience or particular interest in taking this type of photo, but I was really bored...And hey, I should try to be more well rounded as a photographer. I basically just took stuff that I had lying around my room and tried to put something thematic together...Probably not too many other people who have an Israeli flag, an Arabic Quran, and a rosary just lying around their room...Unfortunately, the Arabic script doesn't show up too well on the shrunk down image...Feel free to rip me to shreds on this one...

[jar_e]

What great symbolism in this pic. I love this idea and concept, and I love the title you gave to it (Clash of Civilizations). Very fitting. The one thing that I find a little distracting is with the beads on the black background, it's hard to determine background from the beads on my monitor.

Regardless great shot though,

Jared

[Trevor Ash]

It's a very creative idea. If there were "one" thing that I would change about the photo it would be the kind of lighting. It looks like you used direct flash. If you care enough about this idea and want to try other variations, I'd try and shoot the same scene with a more directional soft light such as that found from a large window. You may need to diffuse it slightly so that the shadows aren't too hard....unless that's what you like.

[drg]

The arrangement needs work. Even with the Star of David, the Israeli Flag borders on being strictly a secular item (though there's about 2 billion World Citizens who'd disagree hotly) and sort of is disjointed from the obvious religious importance of the other two items. The Crucifix and Rosary probably should be spread out more.

One place to begin is to give each item the same amount of "attention" in the photo either by the amount of the frame they fill
or
placing them in visual sequence to lead into one another (use one edge of the flag for one item and the perpindicular edge for the other and tiem them together with some arrangement of the Rosary beads)
or
leave and open space of the background equivalent (roughly) to the space consumed by each of the other three (This is a variation of the first suggestion)

and the list could go on.

If you want to make a personal statement make the central piece the one the reflects your beliefs, background, upbringing or some variant.

You might even look for other religious tokens (skull caps, Holy Bibles, Torah Pointers, prayer rugs, tefillah and such)

Best wishes-CDP