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I don't think the second one you posted really says anything. It's a handful of cards and some chips and they're not placed in an overly attractive or imaginative way. The black background doesn't help as the objects just seem a little out of place. If they were put on a proper casino table with the green felt, it would at least be in context.

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Nikon D700 | 20mm f2.8 | 28mm f2.8 | 50mm f1.8 | 70-300 f4-5.6 | SB800 | flickr | serial photography

I see where you are comming from!!! I however do not have a poker table. I also dont have many things to work with. I had to really look for even chips to put in the picture. I think that with all the backgrounds that I used the black made everything look nice, maybe out of place but nice.

Not good at all. It's got better WB and is sharper, but the main issue is that you lack imagination and ideas as I identified with my previous post. The background's the least of your issues. I had just 4 playing cards for my image and surely you must understand that there's more to cards and chips than cards and chips...try telling a story if all else fails. What do you want your image to tell us? At the moment it's cards and chips.

The composition is weak as well with too much emptiness on the left, and there's no immediate focal point to lead the eye towards (it's evenly weighted between the red chips and the fan of cards), and this is down to your DoF control.

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Nikonian

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