Sunglasses

Took these shots today in studio. Trying to decide if I prefer the color of BW better. Would like to hear which you like better and other general critique! Thanks!

Both are equally good, very good. If I were to choose I would probably go for the colour. But there is something overworked looking about the blue but happily it does not detract from the overall.
But the pose is great, almost a natural pose which is the hardest pose of the lot. A good moment.

This face is pretty soft, it looks like the forearm is in more focus. Yeah, a pretty natural looking pose.

image is kinda soft...

I find that it is the very softness that make these images so successful.
Why is there such an obsession with sharpness?

An interesting observation about our obsession with sharpness! I agree with Tom that, sometimes, softness can be a creative tool.

Not in this case though, methinks. The 'product' being promoted here is a pair of Raybans - being an optical product, does it do Rayban any good if an advertising image is soft? I would have thought that many products would be fine with a soft image - but probably not an optical one!

Cheers
Mike

I don't know that the image needs to do ray ban any advertising favors. That said, I agree that it is excessively sharp. Some amount of softness might be good, but this looks excessive.

I'm gonna have to agree...softness can me good for certain images, but I don't think it works on this one. It would be a stronger image if it was sharp.

Thanks for comments! I agree about the softness as the glasses are clearly the focus in the image. The story behind this photo is that is was a portrait shoot. The model was complaining about the bright lights, so he jokingly put on his Raybans. I snagged a few frames as he did so, this being one of them. It happened so fast, I wasn't able to set the focus properly. Oh well. :)