Shot this last night. I haven't done any post work on it yet. I'm looking for suggestions on what I should do with this, if anything. Crop? Just clean up? Re-shoot the scene? (which is an option if the sun ever comes out again. Most of the light came from my kitchen window)

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions....

-Taltos

hmmmm.....at first I was gonna say just clean it up, it's a way nice picture as it is.....if you're gonna reshoot, the only thing I would suggest would be a 'tighter' background, literally extra tension in the cloth, just to eliminate the creases and highlights. Either that or edit out the background and put a dark-grey-almost-but-not-quite-black one in. Really like this though. (",)

That's a cool shot, I like the POV a lot...like Jordy says though...the background needs a bit of work, and then this (already good) photo would be really good! Oh, one extra thing I did notice however, the left part of the image does seem a bit empty. :-)>

Damn this is good Taltos! My monitor must be calibrated more darkly than the others though because I do not see the background cloth! I just see the black chess pieces behind the main subject... I like this very much!

I am, therefore I create.......
--- michelleamarante.com

Nice photo. Love the angle. The lighting is good. Not sure I see the problem with the background, maybe it is my crappy monitor here at work. JordyArt, Punkclown can you point out the problems. So that a slow person like myself can see and maybe avoid in my photos. --Randy R

I really like this and can't really add to what has already been said, I would say shoot some more in different lights just to see what you come up with & how the focal point changes, potential for some more good shots here.

elusive.chaos

"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star...." (Nietzsche)

Nice, it for me looks like a general whith his army :-)

I think this is the base of a very interesting image. You say you are going to do some post work, I would remove the background and add some sky, you can make this easier by shooting against a lighter background. If you play a bit you can overlay the sky onto the board area and get it to look like it is reflecting. Nice shot hope you have fun with it :o)

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. Salvador Dali

OMG, someone wants me to help point out problems?? are thay MAD? Randy, I wish it was a case of just saying 'You will need to do this or that' but unfortunately, as we've found in the past, there are no hard & fast rules.... simply keep posting pics and we'll try to guide ya! (",)

Like everybody said, it's fine already. If I were giving it a shot (no pun intended) I would see if I could move in just a bit closer IF the knight was still in the DOF. This one should be fun to work with.

Thanks all for the suggestions. I was working on this at home when the power went out all over town (is it sad when you come into work at night, just to use a computer that's working off a power generator?). Anyway, I cleaned up the spots on the drape, and darkened up the background, and that improved it quite a bit. I tried cropping some from the left, but it left it kinda unbalanced. Phrank, funny you should mention moving the knight forward. My original intention was to use the scene for my tryptich. I had one shot of the knight on the far side of the board, the shot above, and a shot of the knight right in front of the lense. I was sort of playing with the idea of motion that someone had mentioned last time I posted a tryptich. The close up shot came out totally blurry, though, and my camera doesn't have a manual focus (our company profit-sharing checks come in next month. I'm buying a real camera!). Maybe I'll post the original idea, complete with blurry objects, just for fun. Mysnapz, I like the idea of the sky. That would look pretty cool. I hadn't really intended on doing that much post work to it, but I may play with it some time. Anyway, I'll most likely post the results in the gallery tomorrow. Thanks again for all the help! -Taltos

I really like this, the reflection is a killer!!! The others already said so much about this piece (or pieces hehehe). Reminds me so much of Alice, and that Lord of the Rings pewter chess set that I can't afford... LOL (*