Hope every body's heard of the "Hey Culligan Man!" slogan - it is pretty old - but this Culligan Man still hears it all the time.
I've debated long and hard on whether or not to submit this at all because of the quality. It's noisey and grainey from the poor lights in Wal-Mart - I didn't use a flash - that would have drawn even more attention. My camera freezes whenever I try to change the settings to achieve a good DOF so it's all auto settings again. Had to go with black and white as 2 of the ladies in the background were wearing hot pink and all the signs were bright yellow and blue - it was way too busy and took away from him as the subject - especially since I'm not using DOF as much as I should. I hope he is seen as the main subject. I've gotta learn editing or re-sizing better because I get too much distortion just from saving to be uploaded here.
Editing: crop, switch to B&W, despeckle, re-size, edge preserver.
Statistics
Place: 89 out of 109 Avg (all users): 4.8533 Avg (commenters): 4.5000 Avg (participants): 4.5538 Avg (non-participants): 4.9536 Views since voting: 1103 Views during voting: 373 Votes: 259 Comments: 8 Favorites: 0
::: Critique Club ::: Hi Shannon, this is the in-depth critique you asked for from one of the CC members, I'm delighted I drew it.
First Impression - the most important one: Being from New Zealand, the title didn't mean anything to me but I guessed it was a well-known advertising slogan (check my profile you'll see why).
The first impression was of an interesting slice-of-life shot. It's somewhat appealing being a sort of urban time-stamp. It made me stop and inspect it rather than just breeze past it. Good start.
Composition: I rather liked it. You have the principal character nicely off-centred with the activity in the background slightly OOF so it's busy but not distracting.
Subject: I like the cheeky feel of this, using the ad byline, there's a nice whimsy with it. I think you missed the challenge by a bit, but then you already comemnted on that yourself. The intent of the challenge seemed to be to have a crowd of people, one of whom you could single out. Yes it did say with shallow DOF but as the winning shot shows us, that singling out can be achieved in a number of different ways. Your Culligan man is probably a little too isolated from any crowd to have got you a high vote from him.
Technical (Colour, focus, and light): I love your explanation of the reason for going B&W. Well thought out and well reasoned - good choice. I sometimes have an issue with the amount of gratuitous B&W conversions in our challenges, this isn't one of them.
There is an issue with sharpness. It looks like motion blur on his face because the rest of his shirt is pretty sharp. At 1/60 shutter speed that's not unexpected.
To grow its vote?: Sometimes I think vote-chasing is an uncomfortable compromise but having said that, it's damned satisfying if your peers like your work. This subject wasn't ever going to score high in DPC because it doesn't have water, sunset, a scarfed woman or Iceland:) Outside of the subject matter, it doesn't really have the drama, quirkyness, humour or wow-factor to ribbon ... BUT ...
Summary: ... it is an important social comment and record of ordinary urban life. Especially where the Culligan Man is known. I don't for a minute underestimate the importance of that - it's the sort of thing you'll see in a 2050 museum exhibition of "Life at the turn of the Century". It will cause people to get a faraway look in their eye as they think "oh yes, I remember that.."
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