Brand and product advertising

Love that this was not a setup shot and was just taken from your garden! You have captured a great image - lovely exposure, depth of field and sky detail. Any professional photographer would be pleased with this photograph and if you've not already approached the Bath Balloons company, you should. Remember, please don't give it away without charging a fee for it as this just brings down the value in what we do for a living. I'm sure they would ask you to pay for a flight. Thank you for submitting it.

Lovely watch photograph. I presume this is a montage with the background or you've spent a lot of time cleaning up the reflections of the water in the watch strap. I have to mention the one thing that doesn't work for me and I'm sure is an oversight - it's the burned out white patch on the lower middle left side. Such a shame as this could have taken the top slot. I love the clean watch face - no reflection from lighting sources and I like that I can read the "professional 200 meters" on the face. Well done.

Beautifully lit, the colouring is so smooth and rich. The highlights are smooth and consistent. Really nicely done, from a technical perspective. It didn't make the final top three for me as it lacks emotion, it didn't stir me! I hope you understand what I'm trying to say, if it had a fire in the background or a setting that had a story to tell this would easily be my number one from a technical perspective. Just missed out by a tiny bit. Thank you for submitting it, a well deserved top placing.

Love this as an advertising style photograph... The timing is spot on, capturing the explosive moment, the motion and thickness of stout. I didn't realise it was a chance moment until after I had rated it and read the background. Still it stays in my top position as it has great lighting, colouring and post processing to clean it up. I really like the colouring and balance between the rich browns and the blue, these compliment each other beautifully. The only thing I'd suggest is to tweak the horizon as it's slightly leaning off to the left, otherwise this is a great example of an image that captures people's attention.

This one just jumps out of the page thanks to the colouring, composition and that little smile. Technically it is a little off; your focus plain is in front of the man on the blades of grass and not quite on his face or logo, but still, it's not a studio image and captures a moment of fun. The Bokeh is lovely, especially against the backdrop of the raindrops. Would I be correct in saying that the top part has been added in photoshop? A great submission, thanks for entering.

This is a shot you've taken on a photography course... Hmmm, not convinced you have a good teacher if I'm honest or perhaps you should be asking for some direction. I mean this constructively! Why do I say this? Well, firstly, the colour composition unfortunately does not work, in fact the pink clashes with the rest of the items.

So let's look at how you could improve this, well, what are you trying to tell us with the shot. It looks like it's about cooking ingredients, so perhaps an earthy, healthy background, a few of the peppercorns and/or some of the oil poured around the products. The shape would lend itself to landscape rather than portrait (the top half of the photo is wasted). You'd then be on the right road.

Seriously, if you want to learn, one of the easiest places to start is by watching some YouTube videos, then getting out and shooting.

Thank you for submitting the image.

Visually, this is lovely. The colours work, the composition and elements are interesting but... I feel you missed a couple of tricks here, from an advertising image perspective that is. The nut's would have been ideal to have moved into a shape - something that told a story, maybe a country, or a logo or even around the leatherman, and actually why nuts? The leatherman doesn't have a spanner. If these had been screws that relate to the screw driver, and then put into a shape, you'd have a stunning composition and concept. Thank you for entering, it's a lovely shot.

Nice attempt! A few pointers if I may. Firstly, the composition is almost there but the bottom of the glass is sitting higher than the background bottle, the perspective isn't quite right and this stands out to me. Secondly, your lighting should be focused on the product and not on the background, the grey white backdrop just distracts from the whisky. Thirdly, your camera settings are off. Try shooting at ISO 100 rather than 640, so you have no grain and much smoother details. Your shutter speed is 250th so either you are using a flash sync speed in which case you need to adjust and direct your lighting to create mood and focus, or shoot with high speed sync to freeze the liquid's motion. Not sure I understand how your aperture is at f/22 and the background is blurred the way it is, perhaps adjusting the ISO to 100 and using a lens sweet spot of around f/8-f11 for sharpness would have helped. Still, a good attempt, and thank you for submitting the image.

Looking at a thumbnail of this shot I thought I'd found a cracking image; something that wasn't a watch or whisky, and it almost was but for a couple of things.

I hope you don't mind if I share my thoughts.... These are Louboutins! A world famous shoe brand known for... red soles! These should have been the focal point of the image, not the stitching on the back of the shoe, sorry, but it's in the wrong place.

And the focus is also on the highlight reflection in the heel, looks like a window I can see. And that is the problem in this context of an advertising photograph, I should be looking at this photograph in no doubt that i'm looking at a pair of Louboutins.

It sounds like you will have the opportunity to shoot these again, so do keep in mind who the viewer is, and what an advertising photograph is trying to do.

Thank you for submitting the images, a really nice composition, nice product and overall feel.

Nice light, nice composition, good scale - it's just a shame about the band I can see in the reflection. I know it's not a lot but it stands out a mile to me. Personally, I would have Photoshopped out the band and used a nice ND grad from the foreground of the shadow to the bottom of the ring to lose. And maybe introduce a contrast curve and a little colour toning to make the image pop! Fundamentally, this is a great image, just needs that extra 10% to lift it to the next level. Thank you for submitting it, and I hope you don't mind my feedback.

Good starting point. Okay, so looking at your EXIF data I can see that the shutter speed of 15th of a second on a lens of 120mm isn't going to work unless it is on a really steady tripod and sadly I see blur, a lot of blur on the label in particular. You are also shooting on one of the best cameras ever made, the Nikon D810, which has immense power and resolution and mind-blowing ISO performance. You could have switched the ISO up to 6400, which would have increased the shutter speed to a level that would have retained the sharpness of the photo. Sorry to say but a blurred image is just not going to get past the first round of edits. Best of luck for the future, with that camera you should be submitting first class pictures soon.

Nice try. Interesting reading your thought processes behind getting to this final image...

Your final image reflects your title "Ketchup Rocks", but why does Ketchup Rock? Not sure I understand why it has to rock. For me, a good product shot of a ketchup bottle would be been closer to answering the brief.

I thought I'd write a review on this one as I noted your comment about the lighting and reflections and this is a good point but, unless you're shooting an image to be cut out and used on a product page, then 'controlled' lighting is what you need. for example if you have camera flashes, moving them off camera, and making some flags (black boards), would allow you to direct the light creatively. I think creative lighting is what is missing from this shot. Thank you for submitting it, I wish you all the best.