The DPChallenge contest title for this week is "Minimalism", and the challenge details are:
Create an image where your subject is the strong point of the image, but only occupying a very small portion of the image space.
I've narrowed my entry candidate down to one of three images, from two photographs, which I have placed into their own gallery category. My instinct tells me to go with 40mm Forehand, which has the most dramatic lighting, but I'm actively soliciting feedback.
Amusingly, 40mm Forehand didn't look so good in the camera LCD display, and I spent over half an hour taking additional shots with different flash configurations and player positions, resulting in a lot of shots with blown highlights on the ball, and leading me to eventually simply bounce-flash the ceiling to get the two backhand shots. Going over the shots, I now realize why the forehand shot came out and the others didn't — I had originally placed the slave flash too close (I thought) to the table, so I was really mostly flashing the bottom of the table. This provided exactly the right amount of light. As soon as I had the slave flash in a "proper" position, I blew the highlights with every shot, even if I set the flash level three stops down.
Thanks go to Bogdan (the player in the pictures) and Logan, who helped set up the shots.
My 2 pesos
I liked all three very much. The lighting on 40mm Forehand is indeed more dramatic than the others, but it also struck me as a little too much; the Backhand shots looked more natural (and thus more attractive, for my tastes). As for which the judges might prefer, I have no idea.
As an aside, it was very hard to tell what the subject was in the thumbnails. It was only after seeing the full images that I realized it wasn't the Sun through a filter!
Actually, I'll bet that would make an impressive picture, especially if there are a lot of large sunspots.
Yep...
... you're an astronomer.
Thanks. I submitted the 40mm Forehand shot. As long as you're not seeing a technical flaw in it, the judges consistently score dramatic shots above realistic shots, as long as I don't cross over the line and make it downright surreal.
Too dark?
Interestingly, the only criticism so far is that the background is too dark. If I made it any lighter, I'd think that I'd get criticism that the background is too noisy.
The shot isn't doing as well as I'd hoped so far, though there's a chance it will improve thoughout the week.