I had an earlier shot of this, but went back again when I had bright late afternoon sunlight shining right into the garden area, and repositioned myself to get a clear shot of the bench. I took several shots with and without Isaac on the bench, but this one was not only the sharpest, but I thought his pose was rather emotive and in tune with the theme of the photo; his little splash of color goves a place to draw the eye into the back of the photo.
It's not quite as sharp as I'd like (these were all handheld shots), but any more sharpening would entail even more JPEG compression and produce worse artifacting -- this kind of image with lots of tiny edges requires more compression than usual to meet the size limit.
Things I do like:
-the range from near-macro of the pebbles in the FG to individual leaves and branches in the back; visible stones in the FG blocks and folds in Isaac's clothing; railings and battens on the back wall (evidence of deep DOF)
-arching shapes made by plants and shadows in the upper corners, framing Isaac on the bench (compositional element)
-tonal values and object sizes make three horizontal "stripes" (compositional element)
-repeating element (blocks) in near-FG and far-BG; repeated sweeping curves (path and blocks) (compositional element)
-pretty good exposure and tone range (can see individual rocks on the deeply-shadowed path) (technical quality)
-pose is clearly visible, and is emotionally reinforced by its tininess and remoteness ("emotional pull" and composition)
-if you look carefully, you will see Isaac's rubber coral snake lurking in the FG (humor factor)
Tone curve. Cropped/resized, one pass with USM at 88%, 0.6 dia, threshold 5, JPEG level=5/10, border.
Statistics
Place: 141 out of 158 Avg (all users): 4.6277 Avg (commenters): 5.3333 Avg (participants): 4.4615 Avg (non-participants): 4.7835 Views since voting: 1400 Votes: 188 Comments: 3 Favorites: 0
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
