Your photos—all extreme close ups—should show 1) Affinity of shape, line, tone, or color; 2) Contrast of shape, line, tone, or color; and 3) Ambiguous space
Photo #1
This first picture was taken after I saw these really cool trees, covered in snow, being illuminated by bright lights from a car dealership. I went for some ambiguous space here, trying to cause the viewer's eye to wander for a moment before settling on anything in particular. I also like the affinity of color here; it's not black and white, but the only light source is this cool light filtering through the trees.
Photo #2
For the second picture, I wanted to mess this contrast of color while keeping affinity of line. For the most part, this image consists mostly of curved lines. Even the straighter lines in the back are blurred sufficiently to take the edge off of them. However, the viewer's eye is (hopefully) almost immediately drawn to the red film roll, because of the heavy contrast with the background.
Photo #3
For this last one, I wanted to use contrast in basically every way. That bird is curved, the cage is straight. The bird is yellow, around her is blue and pink. With the cage in the foreground, I was worried that we'd lose focus on the subject, but with a bit of saturation changes in post, I was able to draw her out sufficiently.
-Tanner
1) I like how in the first photo it's a close up, but you can instantly tell what it is. The level of detail on the branch is nice, and the crisp white outline of the hoarfrost makes it beautiful. I think texture is the biggest thing this has going for it, and it's got some nice irregular rhythm as well.
2) How do you make your stuff look this good? I swear, this shot simply belongs in a movie. The contrast between the red canister and the blue background is a nice touch to really make the image pop. This image is a good reminder that you don't always need to have a ton of production design things in…