I'm not sure I got the concept :S
One light from the left. Coverted to bw in PS, then increased the contrast, applied smart sharpen and unsharp mask (yeah I know, I like combining them :) and that's about all.
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Place: 158 out of 359 Avg (all users): 5.3483 Avg (commenters): 8.5000 Avg (participants): 5.1096 Avg (non-participants): 5.5143 Views since voting: 762 Views during voting: 248 Votes: 178 Comments: 7 Favorites: 0
I'm not sure you needed quite as much surrounding black area (or maybe more?). There's good detail in the mid-tones; maybe that and the brightness of the highlghts combine to make the subject itself not as low-key as it could be, but really, I don't see much problem with this photo myself -- I like geometric patterns and odd objects.
I think you may have ran into some folks with uncalibrated monitors who thought the photo was overall dark. I looked at it on 2 monitor before I would comment on it. I like the details in the photo and the overall compositon.
I think you did very well with the concept - to me "low key" brings out the contours and shapes of something and you did that here. To help your score in this environment, you might try a composition a little less centered, with a bit of negative space.
The technicals: focus and lighting are well done. The composition is quite static with a perfectly centered subject. The low key is actually well done IMO.
The feel: What does the low key approach add to the picture? I'm not quite sure. It does give a little mystery to the mask, but it isn't strong.
The game: Pictures of figurines, statues, or general kitsch are voted lower as a whole on DPC. I'm sure you ran into some of that.
Bianca, I didn't vote in this challenge, but I have enjoyed going through them after-the-fact. I think your idea was well laid out and the lighting is perfect. I think you could have gone with a tighter crop and not so centered. I think the noise in the background surrounding the mask is a little distracting, and so the tighter crop would have eliminated that. All in all though, I am impressed and would have scored it in the 6-7 range, as it clearly met the 'low light' challenge.
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