Traitor  by mej2011

Traitor

I've noticed lately that Marty, the Martin guitar bear, has had his eye on my Dean guitar. He better not try any funny business.

Yet another shot that turned out NOT at all like I had planned. My original idea was to have Marty on the side of the guitar just looking at it. When I tried that either my funky red and blue chair was in the shot, or my bookshelves were in the shot. SO I had to settle for this angle instead. I tried focusing on the bear, I really did. I'm not sure what happened there, but he's blurry. Oh...and I HATE reflections, in the first billion takes that I did, you could see the pattern of my comforter, so I had to change the comforter. Then I had lovely maroon comforter, against green wall. UGLY! So I decided to process, even when I said I was going to SOOC shots for awhile.
Editing consisted of Photoscape's auto level, crop, Black and white, and finally Sepia effects.
great lighting in this photo!
December 1st, 2011  
@ham4141
Thanks Holly! The lighting is the one thing I like in this photo.
December 1st, 2011  
Cute photo...great tones
December 1st, 2011  
@5unflow3r
Thanks Trina!
December 1st, 2011  
My favourite part of this shot is the lighting and the shadow. I'm glad you capitalized on that:)
December 2nd, 2011  
@pwallis
Thanks! Yeah, I like the lighting, the rest, not so much.
December 2nd, 2011  
oooh guitars.... I like your POV here and the light is great.
December 2nd, 2011  
I like the oblique light a lot
December 2nd, 2011  
@janmaki
I hate my point of view here. It's not what I had originally planned, and again I had the problem of the camera acting weird when I tried getting closer. I do like the light though. Thanks!
December 2nd, 2011  
@woot
Thanks Davide!
December 2nd, 2011  
OK...finally getting to this photo. Man this is what happens when my photography career gets in the way haha.

So...first...the lighting. I like how you used the strong beam of light from the window across the bed. But other than that you didn't use the light for your character: the bear. It's most backlit with a very dark face. If you would have shot the photo from the right corner of the bed, and turned the bear a little bit, you could have gotten light on about 1/3 of it's face.

Now...framing. You are still trying to show *everything* in your photos. Less is more. You show a huge bed, blank back wall, but why? Remember: if you can cover up a portion of a photo and it still make sense, you need to crop tighter. You wanted to tell the story of a bear betraying his heritage and going for a new guitar. Well...how do *we* know that? All we see is a bear and a guitar. We can't see the name of the guitar or hardly any of the details because the bear is blocking it.

Get closer. Don't be afraid to crop out parts of the guitar. Lose the bed and wall altogether.

How could you have positioned the bear for a better photo? How could you have told a better story?
December 4th, 2011  
@jasonbarnette
It seems that no matter what I do, short of being right on top of the object, I can never get in close enough when I take the picture.
Ideally, the bear would have been better on the side of the guitar just looking at it, like I had originally planned, but as I said in the caption, one of my chairs would have gotten in the way, and it's huge, and heavy, and really not worth the effort to move.
I will try this again, but not today. It's pouring, so no light.
December 4th, 2011  
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