Composition & Color

[shinji_45]

Hi guys, im doing some still life shots for a neckles i, i need feedback and critiques on my shots regarding the composition and color of the shots. Any critique or feedback will be appreciated.

 

[entropy_h]

I don't ever critique people's work, but I had to say something here.

If your main subject is the necklace, I have to say it doesn't seem that way. All I see is this big, red patch in the top left corner and that is what grabs my attention. The composition doesn't work for me at all.

Your main subject here seems to be the glass, the stones in the glass and the flower. The necklace seems to be an after-thought.

With that being said, technically it's a sound picture. Necklace is in focus and the lighting works for me.

 

[shinji_45]

It is an honor to be the first person that u critique. I totally understand where ur coming from, from a strictly composition wise point of view, the huge red flowers and the colored stones might throw the attention away from the neckles. At first i took only a simple pic with only the neckles as the main focus, just a neckles with a blurred background. But this is what felt after taking the simple picture: i thought the first picture was too plain, and I put myself in the shoes of a seller of this neckles( to expand my view and perhaps to get an alternate composition), if i post a plain pic of a neckles it wouldnt attract much attention. Furthermore, the neckles is targeted at female, and i assume that females like colorful pretty stuff, and i wanted for them to relate the pretty stones and flower with the neckles. As an amature photographer sometimes i am confused between choosing the correct composition or the correct feel. I mean would the correct composition, a composition free of all distractions be the best picture?

I thank whoever read through that huge chunck of stuff that i just wrote, and if possible, throw me you two cents worth. Thanks

 

[headfonz]

here's my take. as a still life shot, it works for me. as a product shot, it doesn't.

the general exposure is really nice and brings out the colours of the various subjects, but the necklace itself is in shadows. so as a product shot, i would not even notice the necklace.

if its a product shot, then i think you will really need to keep the composition simple and bring out the best aspects of the product to grab a viewer's attention. jewelry adverts are usually really simple and shows alot of 'bling'. even product shots with models will be simple and the overall look should allow the target market to identify with the product.

 

[entropy_h]

It is an honor to be the first person that u critique. I totally understand where ur coming from, from a strictly composition wise point of view, the huge red flowers and the colored stones might throw the attention away from the neckles. At first i took only a simple pic with only the neckles as the main focus, just a neckles with a blurred background. But this is what felt after taking the simple picture: i thought the first picture was too plain, and I put myself in the shoes of a seller of this neckles( to expand my view and perhaps to get an alternate composition), if i post a plain pic of a neckles it wouldnt attract much attention. Furthermore, the neckles is targeted at female, and i assume that females like colorful pretty stuff, and i wanted for them to relate the pretty stones and flower with the neckles. As an amature photographer sometimes i am confused between choosing the correct composition or the correct feel. I mean would the correct composition, a composition free of all distractions be the best picture?

I thank whoever read through that huge chunck of stuff that i just wrote, and if possible, throw me you two cents worth. Thanks

I don't think there's a CORRECT composition per se. Let me just throw in more than my 2 cents worth, say about 7 cents.

Here are some examples I randomly pulled off websites by googling jewellery:

This one makes use of selective colouring, with the products actually on a model together with a flower, not just by itself.

Here, on Tiffany's website, most of the products are shot as is on a plain white background, without any distractions:

I'm no expert for product/still life shots, but it seems with jewellery as the subject, it might be best to shoot it on a model if it's say for an ad, and if it's for catalogue or something like that, close up shots of the product alone seems to be the way to go.

I don't think a woman would be attracted just because it's colorful. They probably want to see how it looks like on a model so that they can best gauge how it would look like on them.

 

[entropy_h]

here's my take. as a still life shot, it works for me. as a product shot, it doesn't.

the general exposure is really nice and brings out the colours of the various subjects, but the necklace itself is in shadows. so as a product shot, i would not even notice the necklace.

if its a product shot, then i think you will really need to keep the composition simple and bring out the best aspects of the product to grab a viewer's attention. jewelry adverts are usually really simple and shows alot of 'bling'. even product shots with models will be simple and the overall look should allow the target market to identify with the product.

Yup, fully agree with you.

 

[IONSOON]

just like people had mention, if the necklace is ur main subject, probably u shud make the necklace outstanding from the rest

in my opinion, if u do away with the necklace , crop the blur flower slightly and stick wif the back lighting, i tink it is a wonderful pic as backlighting bring out the nice colors of the stones and the natural colour of leaf

just my humble opinion

 

[shinji_45]

entrophy_h, headfonz, and ionsoon, thank you guys for the very constructive and objective critique and comments. So to kind of summarize what you guys said : the neckles doesnt pop out in the picture, for a jewellery shot, it is better to have less or no competing elements in the shot. I will take note of this in my future photography endavours, actually i tried to photoshop the pic so as the neckles would be brighter using the hue/saturation function on only the neckles, but it was too troublesome and i didnt think i would turn out super .....anyway entrophy, i have to give you back 5 cents worth of change, cause i dont feel too good taking so much from you, having you search for pics just to show me lol thanks.

/*-------------This point on has nothing to do with technical/ critique of photos--------*/
/*------A Brief story of the pic--------------------------------------------------------*/

To add on, this is really not intended to be a product shot. This is actually a pic that i helped my sis take for her "around the world project" i think thats the name of it. What it's about is a seller sends a peice of jewellery to a person in a country, and she would have to send it to another person in another country, and he/she has to take a pic of the jewellery in a pic that shows where it had been before, the last place that the jewellery was at before was japan( yes a very lucky piece of jewellery) , and now it reached her in california, and she gave me an hour to get a shot done impromptu lol. So all i could do was that ( the pic ) lol yes that is hardly any representation of California, what i had in mind was to portray the summer heat that we are experiencing here.
Yes so that's the story of the pic.
Thank you for reading.

And very sorry for always spelling necklaces as neckles lol

 

[shinji_45]

Anyway this right here is another pic that i got, it was taken at almost the same time, same objective as the previous shot, really wanted to show some 'california' in this shot with the sun through the stones, i know i am not really hitting that mark. This shot is hopefully less clustered. Actually, i dont really know what kind of specific feedbacks i want, so just tell me anything that pops in your head. eg color is off, overexposed, bad composition etc cause i really enjoy reading feedbacks and critique.
Thanks a million!

 

[headfonz]

hi shinji_45, take note of the guidelines for critique corner. do take some time to read through the stickies

Reminder

Please be reminded that you're only allowed to post 1 picture per week for critique request.

There are queries about the counting of the week, as we cannot standardize when a week starts for all members, the week is calculated from the time the 1st post is made for the preceding thread.

 

[espion]

the second shot is much much better ... the first is like someone speaking many things in broken unfinished sentences and we dun know what u are saying

 

[icebox]

I find that there are too many distracting objects and colours, such as the red stones and glare at bottom right. Since it's a rather dark coloured necklace, it's drowned in the cacophony of colours and lights.