This is a really cute composition. But something that jumps out at me is the blue/green cast in the shadows (fluorescent light?). Can you clean this up in PS?

Ah hah, I knew it was obvious. (But I was hoping it wasn't.)

If I could clean this up in PS, I absolutely would. In fact, you should have seen this before my color balance adjustments. It was hideous. I had set the white balance on the camera to tungsten, but I was shooting under two lights - one flourescent and the other I couldn't identify. Of course, this is another limitation of my camera - when I shoot in macro mode, I can't shoot in Raw, which means I can't later correct for white balance in the PS Raw converter. And of course, I have absolutely no eye for figuring out what color adjustments to make to things like shadows to make them look natural. Whenever I try to fix a cyan cast, I end up with red, yellow, maroon, or purple, but nothing in between. I can't even figure out if I should be adjusting shadows, midtones, or highlights, or all of them.

Well, one solution I came up with for the photo on my black and white photoblog today (here) was to select and desaturate the shadow and that helped a bit. (Of course, then I just converted the whole photo to black and white!) I didn't try it here, but maybe it would have worked.

Any suggestions for what you might do?

I would try desaturating just the shadow region too. I like it in color. Or maybe you can try isolating the whole thing over white (getting rid of the shadow completely).

Mixing two lights can be a nightmare, even if you're shooting in RAW. I had an ugly color balance problem today myself, because I forgot to turn off my living room lamp that was in the background. Even though it was dim and at a distance, it caused problems.

First reaction? I hate you for your [apparently] freakishly natural eye for composition. (I kid)

Second (a.k.a. more sane?) reaction? I love the comp...the shallow depth of field makes the shot and, even though it's out of focus, the brown edge of the bowl really anchors things.

One question: did you shoot this as a horizontal shot. Staring at if for a 15 seconds or so made me wish it was a horizontal image (with the right side staying as is, and the expansion coming to left...all out of focus). Just a thought.

And, just in case this post sounds slightly ambiguous, I really appreciate your sharing your images. I learn something every time I visit.

Chiaroscuro, remember way back when when we wouldn't even notice things like this? It was a simpler time. :)

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I really do need to learn to be more careful about light. After all, it is the whole point of photography!

Sean, thanks for the super compliment! As for how I shot it, no this is the whole frame and it was vertically aligned. I purposely framed it so that the dipping dish was not completely in the shot, but now that I look at it anew, I can see why you would wish to see the rest of it. Though actually, it's a rectangular dish and the narrow end is facing us, so there's really not much more to see. (See here for the complete dish.)

I think I'll try shooting this again under better lighting conditions. Thanks for the feedback!

Wonderful suggestions already given.
For these eyes, I would have to say that the overall composition is very nice, nice use of selective focus, lighting and colors are nice, but it would be that dark area in the tray that really pops out at the viewer, and in a way, distracts my eyes.

Just some thoughts!
Still, ........ cool image and idea behind it!!

Michael, are you talking about the soy sauce in the dish? Or the shadow of the chopsticks at the back of the dish? Or are you are talking about the shadow underneath the dish? I'm confused... :)

I like the composition a lot. I think that if the focus were in the plane of the front of the dish, it would be more appealing to me. It's possible that the chopsticks would also need to be pushed back so that the major stripes would be closer to that plane as well.

But generally, I like it. I don't find the shadow nearly as distracting as your other posters seem to. But perhaps that's because I'm red-green color blind and it already looks more desaturated to me. :)