I quite like the second one, nice complimentary colours. Not so sure about the first tho. Just kinda looks like what it is a rather uninteresting bowl of fruit on a table. It's not my field so I dunno how to improve it. Exposures look fine tho.
Thank-you for commenting Gents, the fruit was shot with natural light and the nuts were back lit with a small amount of flashHi, For an early attempt I think you have done very well. The first shot is well lit and the exposure and colour are just about right, it's nice and sharp with a good selection of aperture.
The second shot is the best for me. The composition is very good with nice back lighting and once again good colour and exposure. The only criticism I have is that the point of sharp focus appears to be too far back on the sacking, with the nuts not being very sharp. Other than that I like it very much.
Hope this helps.
For the first one, I'd get a little lower, more side on to the bowl, and maybe get some of the wall behind in shot, just to set it a little more in context.
There is a black bg behind the fruit bowl as the window at the other end of the room was flooding too much light in and the table was one big flare it took all the nice colour out
The second one works better, but there's a lack of contrast between the walnut bag and the one below it.
I will try a different base maybe the table or i have a lge piece of cream marble ?
Lightings not too bad, but perhaps try getting the light to shine in from the side rather than what looked to be head on in the first...
Hi Judi,
There have been a few comments on no.2 so I'll give you a few thoughts on the first one.
Exposure and colour all looks good to me and you've obviously given some thought to the surface that you've placed it on. Nice idea contrasting the grainy wood with the glass bowl and the fruit.
So all the elements are there, but there are a few things that I think would give it a lift from just being a bowl of fruit.
If you look at the composition you've chosen it's placed a little to the left of the frame, but everything is still fairly central in the image. It's also all very round - a round bowl and a fairly round mound of fruit on top of it.
This gives the impression of it all being very squashed, compressed and in the nicest possible way just not very interesting.
With this sort of subject, it often works well if you think in terms of creating loose triangles with your objects.
Just something simple like arranging the grapes so that they're draped over the edge of the bowl would immediately break up the round edges of the overall shape, give you one side of a loose triangular arrangement and allow you more scope to move the bowl further off centre in the frame without unbalancing the whole thing.
The other thing to think about is lighting. The window light from above has given you a good exposure on the fruit, but the glass bowl and wood surface are left in shade and looking a bit flat.
As I said, I love the idea of combining wood and glass to add some interest but they would really benefit from some lighting to bring out the textures. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate if you're just starting out - play around with home made tin foil reflectors to get some light bounced in from the sides at the bottom of the image. Nothing so harsh that you start creating unwanted shadows, but enough to give the glass some sparkle and bring out the wood grain.
Definitely on the right track though. Keep going and I hope we see more of these from you
EDIT : I see Mark snuck in there with a comment about side-lighting too while I was typing!!!
Hi Judi, absolutely !!!
Copy and paste in whatever way helps you.
It's far from the be all and end all but it's probably a decent enough starting point.
Once you get to grips with how lighting and composition affects the way your subject appears you can play around with it and mix things about.
For example, a central "round" composition like you have here would work well for a single type of small fruit in a bowl - strawberries or cherries perhaps. If you also limited your colour pallette to something like red berries in a plain bowl on a white background you'd get quite a graphic, striking image.
You might also deliberately want to make something look ordinary and mundane for a particular atmosphere or message in an image - perhaps as a contrast to something else unexpected in there. I'm currently imagining a huge, hairy Tarantula peering over your bowl of fruit
Any excuse to repost that last shot, Mark! (Always nice to see it though )
Judi, to my eyes, the fruit bowl is showing too much bowl and not enough fruit. I would try draping the grapes over the side of the bowl to hide some of it and maybe even stack a few of the other fruits against it, possibly even just making a pile of fruit on the table and forgetting the bowl! I think having the grin of the wood table running diagonally rather than parallel to the bottom of the frame might work better (the joys of digital - free test shots!) I do like the nuts a lot though, I'm a sucker for monochromes that aren't straight B&W and the colours there are in that shot are all very similar so work together well. Could be time to ditch that "Beginner" prefix.