Just for the record. I didn't vote on this, or any image, in the Bokeh II challenge.
To clear up any misquotes used in user profiles ("...told me that they scored my image low because the hands of the subject were cut off."), what was said exactly is this:
Originally posted by specialk0783:
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... There is a picture of a deer that came in (71st I think?) - that the bg is almost completely blurred a solid color...no nothing...71st? Over my image? ...
... When a completely blurred, nearly solid color bg gets 71st in a bokeh challenge and my entry gets 201st....I just can't possibly be happy with the voters.
Originally posted response by glad2badad:
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It appears that some people prefer a deer as the subject to 1 1/2 hands? ;^)
Well, I liked it and gave it an 8. There's a good chance I was suffering from flower fatigue and was overly excited about this one. I like the shallow DOF and the balanced composition. There are things that might have made it better; but I'm sure you'll get plenty of feedback, from more knowledgable members, regarding those.
To be brutally honest, I would say it placed pretty much where I think it should have placed. There is pretty much nothing really wrong with the shot, just all not that interesting.
The fact that it was not set up doesn´t matter one bit to me and frankly, wether it was or not is irrelevant, all that matters is if it "appears" to be setup and I kindof think that is the case here. The lighting is not bad but hardly good either. The composition is good however and I like the choice of DOF and I personally think it met the challenge, I do suspect though that there were a lot of voters that didn´t think so since it didn´t have any circular highlights in it, there was a huge discussion over this in the forums.
To improve this photo, both as a photo and your score here, you would have needed better stage lighting, probably a black bacround behind the drummer, I would have used a longer lens or a bigger aperture to cast him even more out of focus and perhaps finding a slightly better viewpoint on this, maybe composing it with a tilt to it, having the guitar players hands up in the right corner and the drummer in the lower left corner.
All in all I must say I would have given this a 5 and not commented, opting to go straight to the next photo. I know I am being a bit brutal here and I am sorry if I am hurting your feelings but I hope you value an honest opinion over a brown nosing one.
I do like your thinking process behind this photo and I really encourage you to stay here and keep entering challenges, most people (including me) take about 10-20 challenges to figure out what does well here so please, keep at it.
I also put this comment in the thread you opened here
I would have given this a 10 if I could have just seen a bit more of the guitar, yet croped out a bit of the drum (mostly the cymbol stand that is in the top that distract my eye. Nice moment captured however.
I really like the way this is done; however, I find the slightly out of focus hand in the foreground to be distracting. Perhaps if you had gotten her to lift her hand up out of the shot???
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