Thank you all for your comments. This picture was taken Sunday afternoon, and while I knew it wasn't perfect I thought it was kind of fun anyway. The score certainly reflects that. To answer the questions, yes, this was the only shot I had, my cat went off cat treats (which you can see on the top of the tower, those are not my fingers) for the rest of the day. Yes, the tower did collapse, in fact, I wish I had taken the picture a split-second later, but that didn't happen.
I read up on working with photos in PhotoImpact after this, and found out just what I needed to do to sharpen and lighten the picture a little. Since I wasn't doing that one for the competition, I also included more of the left hand side and just cloned out some of the background which made me crop this way.
Last but not least, Mattias is still blending into the background, but I have to admit that I kind of liked that anyway.
Was this a "chance" shot or somewhat of a "set up"? The cat's expression is priceless! Slight grainyness; motion blur +- thing. Try more light and presetting your camera to manual, faster exposure. Photo 8 Creativity 8 Games 8 total 8
Slightly blurred/out of focus. Try a faster shutter speed if it is in fact blur. I would prefer to see it framed to the left more (more cat, less black space).
understand that you probably only had one chance at this shot. Cat has been chopped off, as well as the Jenga tower, and there is a lot of blank space on the right which isn't needed. Part of cat seems to blend into the background as well
Is that cat food, or somebody's fingers on top of the Jenga tower? This is very dark -- even a simple "auto-levels" in PS might help. The focus is also very soft -- perhaps in part to the dark shooting environment. I think maybe pointing the camera a little further to the left (moving the subject further into the frame) would have been beneficial.
Focus could be better. It is especially noticeable along the left side of the tower. It appears that the shutter speed was a bit too slow. More lighting or perhaps a flash would help avoid this.
I don't think she'll win. I like how the background is black, I wonder how many times you had to do this. Is the top of the tower a little bit motion blurred?
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