Golden corn

[JanN]

This is one of the many pictures I took for the "In the kitchen" assignment..

Didn't really think about the composition for this one. Just placed the corn on the table and clicked some 5 or 6 pictures. This is one of the better pictures.
Shot in Raw, and converted to JPEG using the Digital Photo Professional software that came with the camera (Canon 1000D).
Further post processing with GIMP. Cropped the picture a bit, sharpened it.
Please tell me about the composition, colours.. anything that will help me improve and get a better shot next time.


Here's the picture,



and, here's the Exif info
Camera Canon EOS 1000D
Exposure 0.067 sec (1/15)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 55 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program Aperture-priority AE

And the questions,
1. Lighting. Is the light ok? the light falling on the corn was a kitchen light (that was directly above the table) and natural light (coming from the window).
Is this combination of lights (light bulb+natural light) alright? Or should I have shut the window and allowed only the kitchen light fall on the corn?

2. The stem (?) looks out of focus.. Is this something to do with the aperture setting to f5.6?

3. Post processing .. I use GIMP 2.6.8. I'm a total newbie when it comes to post processing. Just started experimenting with the various plugins. So, just wanted to know if the picture needs any processing?

The picture looked ok to me when I first saw it on the computer, but the more I look at it the more ugly it looks

[RecurrentNerve]

As photos of corn go, this is pretty good. The lighting is good - sometimes regular artificial light (as opposed to spe******ed photographic lighting), especially bright kitchen lights, can be too harsh, but you've got some interesting shadowing here.

The stem is indeed out of focus because of your low f number, but this isn't a bad thing - the interesting part of the corn is the corn itself, not a grubby stem; the shallow depth of field means the kernels are nicely emphasised.

As for processing, if your photo is sharp and exposed well, which this is, there really isn't much to do. Ideally, unless you're going for a specific effect you can't achieve in-camera, you want to do as little post-processing as possible - the more you can do in-camera the better.

Composition-wise, you might perhaps try varying the angles - rather than a straight top-down view, move around and shoot down the length, or perhaps get up close and have the kernels running along the bottom of the shot - play around.

It's definitely not ugly!