Posted by JL Morris on January 26, 2008
Posted under
Color,
Critiqued,
Still Life
Framing is one of the oldest tools used by photographers to give depth to the two dimensional medium of photography. The frame can take many forms; an overhanging branch, a view through an arch way, or as is this case the view through a window. Some techniques are subtle and some are direct.
This shop window image is designed to carry the story of the delicate world of a pastel tea party. It is a kind of dreamy and idealized world. I like how you have included a portion of the bottom window frame to act as an anchor which tells us just how large the window is in one direction. The exposure in the whites is excellent giving the maximum amount of detail. The photographer has done a wonderful job of avoiding reflections in the glass.
There are a couple things that the photographer may wish to take a look at. For some reason the corner of the table at the upper left hand frame appears to be too strong for this delicate image. At the same time if the left edge of the window were removed we would get less of a feeling of tapering of the pains. The final observation has to do with the overall color cast, which appears to be on the gray side, if you wish this can be modified using levels to bring the whites and blacks closer and curves to modify the contrast.
Click on Image 
Marked Up 
Modified 
Share This
Marked Up 
Modified 
January 26th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Thank you Jim. I had tried a cropped out version but found the window just hanging in space. As far as the grey tones, I didn’t see that. The one thing you didn’t mention and possibly didn’t notice is that I rendered a very soft painterly effect on it using Corel. Maybe that’s when I lost a little of the true white.