Hi @keenanldooley, thanks for re-posting for a critique and waiting patiently for me to reply!
I love the overall feeling of your photo! It feels super Christmassy. Contrasting bulbs, the green background. Bokeh! Whatever you used to give the impression of snow on and around the bulbs looks super professional. And on a glass or mirror surface? Brilliant! You fulfilled the assignment to a tee. I wish I had a photo like this in my portfolio.
However, there are some technical aspects that prevent it from being perfect. The first aspect would be it doesn’t feel tack sharp. Zooming in, I’m not sure if it’s back-focused, a low quality lens, or a combination of both. In order for a subject to feel in focus, the part that feels like the “eye” of the subject needs to be what is in focus. If you’re taking a picture of a dog, and it’s focused on the nose instead of the eye, then it feels out of focus, no matter how sharp the nose is. Same thing with humans. And inanimate objects. Just about every object has a “face” that is looking or pointing in different directions. The “eye” of these bulbs are the metal pieces where the string is attached. The white bulb is a lesser subject, so it’s less important to be in focus, but the red bulb’s “eye” is what needs to be unequivocally sharp. Instead, it appears that the plane of focus is slightly behind the metal piece on the red bulb.
And even then, that plane of focus doesn’t look super sharp. That’s where I’m wondering if lower quality glass contributes to the “lack of sharpness” feeling. If the lack of sharpness is a glass issue, then you can just ramp up sharpening in post-processing on future photos taken with that lens that are focused properly.
The second technical thing would be the amount of digital noise in the background. It feels like the shadows have been brightened too much in editing. That could be fixed with software.
The third thing would be to remove the small blemishes in the red bulb. See how the white bulb looks perfectly smooth? I don’t get that impression as well with the red one. It looks used, with little blotches and nicks. Again, this could be perfected in post, if those blemishes are not things that could be washed off of the bulb before the photo was taken.
But other than those things, I’m a real fan of your photo! You edited it well. The ambient lighting isn’t distracting. And the composition is very nice.
Keep it up, Keenan! You’re a good photographer.
