How to improve the composition flaw in this candle photograph?

Question

From here: http://1x.com/forum/bookmarked/31716/critique-on-photo-untitled

it's unbalanced. It almost looks like two images beside each other - one of the lying down candles and one of the upright candles.

Now, when I look at this picture, I feel the same. What can the way by which this looks like one photograph and not two placed side by side?

The story here is "Life cycle of a candle", and I wish to maintain it.

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

(critique-wise: Bah! It's fine as-is. I think that juxtaposition is what makes it a good picture; fluf's implementation of intoTHEwild's idea fixes the flow, but ruins the feel of this image.)

In my mind, the "two [separate] images" is due to the different noise levels (which you've already asked about) on each apparent half of the image: because there is a lot of apparent noise between the two sets of the candles, at a quick glance the picture feels like two separate ones.

The very-wide (1.65) aspect ratio doesn't help matters: the aspect ratio is pretty close to what you'd see from two 5x4 portrait photos sitting side-by-side. On a movie screen that aspect ratio would look great, but in a picture, it's unusually wide. You could try to free up some space in between the candles to get to a more-normal landscape aspect ratio, but I personally think it ruins the feel of the picture:

Answered by drewbenn

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