I would be really grateful for any critiques on this photograph, as it is a shot I took for a photography competition, where the theme is "Still life by candle-light". I will describe how I took this below, and I would be really interesting in feedback on three accounts. One, what do you think of the result; two, what do you think of the technique and three, are there other approaches that I should have considered to do this? Thanks a million in advance for any comments or critiques. I should add that still life is a completely new venture for me, as is candle-lit photography, so I am open to even the most elementary suggestions...
How I did it I set my props up on a black cotton dress belonging to my daughter, placed on the kitchen table with a black card held up behind them. The only lighting used in the shot was 4 nightlights positioned out of frame on each side (8 in total). If you look closely, you can clearly see the candles reflected in the glasses.
I used trail and error to find a manual exposure that would work well, finally deciding that 2 seconds @ f/5.6 gave me the best result. Obviously enough, I used a manual focus, and chose to get the writing on the wine label as sharp as I could, with the rest falling in per the exposure. I shot 21 photos in total, varying the position of the props and landscape/portrait format to get what I felt worked best.
Everything I shot was in RAW. Post-production was pretty minimal. I touched up a blemish on the card background, cropped from a 8x12 ratio to an 8x10 ratio and I needed to rotate the canvas 1.03 degrees, as despite my best effort, I did not get the camera perfectly level when in portrait position on the tripod. I also did minor USM sharpening and a tiny colour correction.
My own critique of this shot is as follows: I really like the way the candle light has brough out very delicate reds in the roses and also in the wine stains on the cork. I am pleased with the composition; I think it works very well. I wonder should I have worked to get the background a bit darker to allow the subject to stand out a bit more; I am also not too impressed with how the bunch of grapes show up - I think they are quite difficult to see. I did try to put some light in the front of the shot (but out of the capture) but there was *way* too much glare for me to get away with it...
I hope someone enjoys this photo even half as much as I enjoyed making it. Sincerely, Mark.
I really like the shot but it makes me wince to see it (perhaps a screen layer with minimal opacity?). I love the rich tones and would hate to see them go. Feels like an expensive wine is in the glass (though I want the fuller one!). Hope you win!
It is overall a little to dark for me. I like your setup, but I do think that you have too many lightsources going. Why not limit yourself to just one or two candles and make that more of a focus and make sure that any other sources of light don't show up as reflections? It would be nice to be able to see the wine label. I agree with you about the background, it needs to be darker, and I do think more light on the subject would be good.
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