Beer Envy

[© Tom Cooper]

Beer envy is what happend when your brother-in-law opts for the flight of craft beer, and you opt for the wine tasting.  That was a mistake.  The wine was good, but I kept thinking "I could be sampling beer."

However, I did get this photo of three of his samples.  Open to all area of critique.  Best viewed full-size.

[Lady GooGoo La La]

The lighting is nice.

I fined the wine glass a distraction, unless the beer glasses were looking up to the wine glass with envy, but if so the wine glass should be in focus, and the top edge entirely visible.
The empty wine glass is also a distraction as is the large character on the wine glass.

The reflection off the table adds little, so actually detracts from the photo by making the subject smaller....I would have recomposed or cropped.

Overall, I think you should have taken this photo BEFORE you drank the first glass/bottle of wine!  ;-)


Lady GooGoo LaLa

[Kevin Childress]

Mmmmmmm .... beeeeeeer !

I like the colors and exposure and all the technical details. I am struggling with the composition just a bit. For me, the wine glass is a bit too tall in the frame. I reckon the camera/lens is sitting flat on the bar top? I may have raised the lens with a match book or the like to angle upward just a nudge.

[David Humphreys ( formerly Galatas )]

I've been holding back from commenting for fear of being seen as too negative. Now that Lady GGLL and Kevin have started the ball rolling I have to say my initial reaction was almost word for word what Lady GGLL wrote , particularly about the wine glass and the character on it.
Isn't there an unwritten rule of composition that warns against having out of focus elements between the subject and the camera ?

[© Tom Cooper]

I'm a little disappointed...I even told the story in the text, but it seemed to slip by everyone.  I thought Kevin would get it at first, but then he slipped back to the whole composition thing instead of the story telling.

 

The beer has my attention.  I want the beer.  I am amazed by the colors of the beer, the reflection of the beer.  I can almost smell it, taste it -- but there's this stupid glass of wine between me and the beer.  You know, the wine with the awards, the fancy bottles, the fancy glass...the glass that doesn't seem to reflect in the bar like the beer...can't pay attention - it's fuzzy -- there's the beer.  Why don't I have any beer?  I want the beer!

 

If I wanted a perfect composition, I would have cropped to just the two glasses on the left - or maybe just one of them.  Instead, I was trying to tell a story.

 

Maybe it stll doesn't work, or maybe we've all become too accustomed to rules of composition.

 

BTW, I am not too disappointed.  I did say "Open to all areas of critique."

 

Tom

[Kevin Childress]

© Tom Cooper wrote:

I'm a little disappointed...I even told the story in the text, but it seemed to slip by everyone.  I thought Kevin would get it at first, but then he slipped back to the whole composition thing instead of the story telling. ... If I wanted a perfect composition, I would have cropped to just the two glasses on the left - or maybe just one of them.  Instead, I was trying to tell a story.

Oh, man. 

First, I really want the beer too! And maybe that's why I want to see it up front? I did understand the underlying story in your introduction - that you wished you had the beer instead of the wine. And I have no doubt that you know the image tells that story. But I must say that I didn't catch the emphasis of that story from the image itself. 

You mentioned that maybe we've all become too accustomed to rules of composition. Yes, I think perhaps there is some truth to this. I do in fact try to separate my opinion(s) of other's image into three segments: technical accuracy (focus, exposure, etc.), composition, and post processing. Admittedly I get stuck on composition more than anything.