Soumyajit, who lives in India, just asked me ,”How do you decide the the correct zoom range when you have a restless subject as this one.” I’m not sure I’m understanding “zoom range”, so I’ll go on the premise that she wants to know the best composition and the best way to frame this very weird critter.
For me, the basic problem here is the lack of believability. It doesn’t feel natural, and the reason is that she says she used a black t-shirt to hide the background; therein lies the problem. Why would there be light just on the spider and not anywhere else? That is, if she was trying to make this look like he was in his natural environment.
The area right under his left legs (camera left) is very confusing and hides his legs, so I would work on making this composition more of what I refer to as a “quick read”.
If the zoom range means how big or small to make him in the frame, I would want to not only make him larger, but I would also want to make it easier for the viewer to see all of him. Perhaps showing scale as well. Right now I have no idea how big this guy really is. He could be the size of a quarter or he could be large enough to swallow the entire city of Tulsa Oklahoma…at one sitting.
One of the pearls of wisdom I often say to my students is to, “consider the scene and its outcome”. Did this photo do/say what you intended?
Visit my website at:www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshops at the top of this post, come shoot with me sometime.
Thanks Soumyajit for your submission, I hope this helped.
JoeB
