Still life Photography Photo Critique

The coins work well as a subject.

This would have been stronger if you had eliminated or reduced the non-coin elements in the photograph. I'm thinking of the stars in the background, the glass base with the very obvious edge at the front of the frame, all of the reflections, etc. There's way too much going on in the frame; too busy and distracting. This might have been very strong if you had used a simple backdrop (perhaps black) instead of the stars and covered the highly reflective glass base with a white or off-white cloth. Then the coins would have stood out strongly

Sharp

Nicely exposed but the highlights on the 1920 coin above the penny are blown out.

The color of the penny looks off to me -- too much green. And some of the color seems to have bled into the non-colored area below the coin, and also in the upper right quadrant of the coin. Need to be more careful with your digital brush work.

I'm confused on this because your note says that this was an "exercise in depth of field" which would lead me to expect a sharp focus on one part of the image and blur in the rest. But in fact everything is in focus, so I can only conclude that you didn't achieve your intended effect.

This is a nice idea. Doesn't live up to its potential because of weak composition -- too much going on in the image. Try it again and remove all of the elements that distract the eye away from the coins.