Kiran: Swapnil, thanks for stopping by. Yes, that shadow is another thing that many people have told me about. In summary I think the main drawback of this snap is the angle of the camera itself! If the angle had been correct, lot of its minuses would have been avoided.

I do have a snap with several coffee cherries – I then took just one single one and placed it separately to click this snap. Regarding the size reference, I was thinking more of a leaf or a petal to give viewers the idea of the size of the subject.

I want to once again mention that your comments are very important for me. Please do keep them coming! Thanks!

Now let us see how it could have been improved.

To remove the shadow effect, and to light up the dark side of the bean, you should have definitely used a reflector. Now I am not talking of a studio set up. What I want you to do now is to always keep handy a white paper and a black paper of A4 size. When you are taking any picture, find ways to mount the white paper (with stones or pencil boxes or small books behind it) to make it work as a reflector. I also use the black paper for backgrounds. I took a good picture today of a flower without harming the tree by placing a black paper behind it to cut down unnecessary things. I will upload that picture in a day or two. These two papers also come of great use while taking portraits.

I also definitely feel that there should have been other things. But flower would not have worked well. If you had many other coffee beans, you could have scattered them around but at a distance from the main subject. What was really needed was some insect to intensify the mood. But of course that comes entirely by chance.

The background somehow does not seem very appealing to me. How about taking it on undulating sand with lights and shadows on it. You may try and find out. You may even try out by placing it on a dark paper in a dark room, ask someone to cast light on it from a certain angle with a torch, use a newspaper to diffuse the light of the torch if the light is strong, place a white paper as a reflector on the dark side of the subject and capture a close shot in macro mode, but keeping the rule of thirds in mind.

You are doing good. Keep on shooting and learning.