Still life

[bje07]

Excellent set of images!!! Is that a reflection surface or a plate with designs in #1? i am confused....In the last image i wanted the reflection as sharp as original, but it is blurred on the flower part

Thank you Nandakumar.

It is a black wooden table covered with a glass top. (#1 and # 4)
the glass thickness is 1 cm, which creates that blur.
I got a new reflection surface but I didn't find time to use it

[Loose Canon]

Why not

Well Jean? I guess I wouldn’t be able to give a good reason why not since we asked each other! In fact, I could probably give more reasons why to!

Still Life is kind of a different kind of thing. Of course you would know this since you say you are adding this to your repertoire. Or I assume and why I asked. With this genre you are in complete control. That means the composition, the lighting, the background, the surface, the surround, everything. That is awesome, but yet with that awesome control comes awesome responsibility to see that everything, and that would be every last detail, has to be happening.

So with that in mind I would offer some thoughts on your shots if that’s cool with you. Even though there are many shots and good thoughts (and I’m not saying mine are necessarily good) are better offered on a one at a time basis. You offered them en masse, and I will offer some ideas to you en masse as offered. It is just subjective opinions and your shots are well executed.

A good still life tells a story. Your #1 seems random. Nothing tying the shot together. The only common thing tying is two bottles of liquor and a glass of it. That is good, but what is the rest? One has to look pretty hard to find where is Wally! You have a lot of clean-up that you didn’t do and I see the dust specks straight off. It has been mentioned by others and you have mentioned your surface choice and it’s not a “blur”. It is a “ghosting”. Meaning a double reflection due to a glass surface. In this shot you have some stuff happening on frame left and center on the surface that is absent on frame right. Except for those dust specs. And that throws the shot out of balance. This is also a matter of your lighting not reaching all the way across the frame because you have lit it generically.

#2? Very cool shot Jean. If it were mine I would not want a large portion of the shot to be out of focus right where your eye looks first. Again Jean? Subjective. Nice lighting here.

#3? The arrangement is nice, but the BG material is so busy and overwhelmingly colorful that I couldn’t find the actual subject matter until I searched hard. If you like the shot and want to go with it I would suggest that you have a close look in the lower right frame corner and do something with that spot where your material didn’t exactly reach that corner of the frame.

#4? Nice. But again double reflections on the surface and on frame left there are some kind of spots that also appear in the double reflection of the cookie (or whatever it is). These are the details I referred to. Lighting looks nice and a shot where complicated lighting isn’t necessary.

#5? Very cool vase Jean! Is there a top rim of this piece? If so you lost it in the BG. Double reflection and the shot looks to be in need of about a 1* counterclockwise rotation to reach level.

Not many posts in this Forum like this Jean. It’s awesome to see you say “why not” and go for it! My hat is off.