I was entirely at a loss for centered composition, as i wanted to do some sort of portrait but couldn't figure out a point of interest - until my model suggested she pose with her sax. It all came together from there and in the end i decided to go with a closeup shot with just the hands to suggest human presence. She's playing an E :) Added the sheet music to balance the bottom of the composition, made sense subject-wise also. Spent ages adjusting the light (was using a reflector without a cover on as a makeshift softbox) and the particular angle and position of the sheet music relative to the bell of the sax for the best balance.
Setup as pictured:
Postprocessing: no crop, some dodging and burning to get the most detail on the hands, paper and sax, some cloning to get rid of distracting dust spots and tiny spot reflections in the sax's bell, resize and sharpen.
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Compositionally, this photo is great, because the centered composition follows naturally. I don´t like that it isn´t monochrome, a simple play with light, instead having the colors of human skin opposing the white of the music sheet. A small detail, but not such a big deal would be asking your model to remove the ring. All these, small observations from the technical point.
Regarding the story, this photo is confusing to me, because it´s periphery is so smooth and pleasant (lovely hands and music sheet), but then at the center is this big dark noisy O, punching my face. I don´t understand the title either: it might work as Jazz, or whatever, but this photo doesn´t say Round midnight to me, despite the association of the sax´s O with the clock.
Still, a very good photo, which, if black and white, I could see hanging on the walls of some jazz bar.
Great lighting and composition! Looks like piano music to me though = ) There's a couple of low notes on the melody out of the Eb Alto range unless you're transposing.
Nice capture. But if I may be nit-picky...perhaps if the rest of the sax and the hand where blurred a bit it would bring out the bell more as the center of the composition
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