I took these on a whim the other night: I opened up one of my Complete William Shakespeare collections to Henry’s Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V, laid my glasses on the book, and took a few photos. It was an experiment in composition. I’m not sure which I like better, to be honest! What say you?
I have a slight feeling, as I write this, that the second photo is better…but I’m damned if I can say exactly why….
Can’t tell by me. I prefer the 1st pic because it looks…less staged, maybe? Something I might do with my specs. The 2nd looked more posed. Also, pic #1has a greater amount of the shadow of the lens, a more interesting and defined shadow of the right stem (from the viewer’s perspective) and the text is less blurry. But I never said I know art.
I prefer the first photo. There is enough dark background, as well as the perspective lines of the page edges and text blocks, to make the book the entire middle ground. The eye glasses are clearly in the foreground but do not blot out the middle ground. In the bottom picture, the glasses overpower the book, pushing the latter too far into the background.
Well, who am I to disagree with the consensus! (These were experiments in low-light and depth-of-field.)
I like the first one better, for a few reasons. The second one is a picture of GLASSES. Sure, they’re sitting on a book, and the book is sitting on a desk, but all that seems secondary to the glasses. The first one is a more composed tableau. It is a scene of glasses on a book on a desk.
In the second picture, the shadow of the glasses is cropped off at the right edge, whereas in the first photo the shadow of the glasses is complete (OK, sure, it runs off the front edge of the book, but we know it’s still there. It doesn’t run out of the picture.) Also, the angle of the book in the first photo is more inviting to the eye, drawing the viewer into the frame. Number one gets my vote.