Couple of old objects

[lineus]

Hi there,
just joined photography.ca board after listening some of the great podcasts from this nice website Very good job, Marco, thanks a lot!
I am far from to be a good photographer and just start to make first steps in this area. I would really appreciate to hear few words about following picture from pro's in photography.



Thanks,
Anton

[jabber]

If this is a "first step," you have a promising photography future, Anton. Nice composition here, atmosphere, warmth, texture on those books, and sharpness on the document (can I assume that's Russian?). It bothers me a little bit that the photograph (within the photograph) isn't sharp--I want to see those people associated with these objects.

[tirediron]

Hmmm... I like the image; I would prefer either a sharply focused foreground or background, but with both being soft, I find it a little distracting.

[ocular]

The picture from middle to left is good, but the blueish gradient(reflection) on the picture is really distracting and takes away from a good picture in my opinion.

[Iguanasan]

Hey, Anton.

I doubt I fall into the professional category but I'll put in my anyway. I'm basically agreeing with what has already been said. I like the scene as a whole, however, having both the foreground and background out of focus in this shot seems a little jarring.

Increase your depth of field in this shot or focus on something in the front and let the background be a background.

Great start though!

[Marko]

Thanks for the compliment and welcome!
Great start (nice light and composition)and I agree with everyone else. If this were my shot, the focal point would surely have been the photograph.

[kat]

I think everyone has given great critiques for you! Wonderful wonderful start!

[lineus]

Thank you for your input! I completely admit your notes concerning glare on the picture frame glass (had to remove it or change position of the light/frame) and focusing in the middle of scene. Actually I made about dozen copies of the same picture with different focus points (picture on the back, book spines and chronometer) and choosed middle focus as the best in this case (f was 6.3). Now I can see that my selection wasn't very good and will remember this lesson.
As Marco said in one of his podcasts - crap is the greatest teacher! Love this phrase!))))
Again thank you for critique!

2 jabber: yep it is old Russian there and the name of the book is "The proportional measuring of human body" - that's why I used that little wooden statue in the picture.

[1putts]

I'm not really worthy to critique, but wanted to say nice shot Lineus. Very cool.