Snow in my flower garden
by ladpupmoe

Comment:
Successful abstraction with only a vague sense of size, dimensions and proportions. An image not merely "of" but "about" shadows (and light, naturally). While the tonal distribution might be tweaked some so as to give the brightest highlights and the deepest shadows just a little bit more definition, the image still provides one with a delightful study of textures, shapes and forms. The concert-piano-shaped shadow gives a gentle nudge to my memory, and some pleasant but long-forgotten memories of mine begin to resurface. I like it when an image does that!

October 2008
by e301

Comment:
Hmmm...Why would there be a painting like that on a wall out on the street like that? But let's never mind that; a bit odd at first but not terribly interesting in and of itself. The image in its entirety, however, is a different story. On one hand, I see a contradiction between the wholly inelegant, sterile, characterless, utilitarian desing of the van and the painting into which one assumes that a great deal of passion, care, love (or hate, or both, as the case may be) and self, not to mention a lot of hard work, was poured. This, for some reason, immediately reminds me of what Wilde once said about making a useful thing being forgivable as long as the maker does not admire it and the only excuse for making a useless thing being that the maker admires it intensely...And then on the other hand, we have curious parallels between the positions of the two men's bodies, and between the open door of the truck and the woman on whose lap the man rests his head. I'd rather go no further than having noted these on a solely visual level, and leave the momentarily fun and exciting yet ultimately useless intellectual exercise of trying to find profound meanings and messages to others. I'd just like to say that rarely do I find myself wanting to look at an image for longer than 5 seconds (Regardless of how scintillating an image the photographer thinks it is) and even more rarely (more like "hardly ever"), being inspired to write a longer-than-five-words comment like this...10

The Shot
by chris48083

Comment:
I can't decide if I like the stop-action or if I'd rather see some motion blur (Maybe combined with rear-curtain sync flash?) that emphasizes the energy and excitement in the game. I don't have anything against selective desat, in general. I just don't think that it adds anything to this particular image.

A Stormy Day At The Castle
by SteveJ

Comment:
Good, balanced composition. However, the overall design suffers due to the presence of cars (I always find them ruinous to images of this type) and of people in brightly colored clothes right along a major leading line. Overcast weather is good for close-ups and texture shots, but not so suitable for wider views like this. Spot lighting (As in a bit of sunlight peeking throuh a crack in the clouds and hitting the building) would have elevated this image to a whole new level...Well, I am never patient or determined enough to just sit there for hours and hope that that would happen, myself. So I shouldn't preach either.

Sierras
by vencap

Comment:
Clean exposure. However, the combination of the large expanse of featurless, uniform sky, straight-on point of view and the dull light which results in cold colors dominating the frame from front to back leads to a flat image without any sense of depth (As in lack of what I call "layers of interest").

Masses On the Move
by JeffryZ

Comment:
Decent documentary image. I think that some motion blur and/or defocusing might have taken it to a different, abstract level, which I personally would have found more engaging.

Johnny, you've been a Bad Boy
by jmritz

Comment:
Amid scores of stale portraits I see every day that bore me stiff, this is such a rare gem that I keep coming back to have another look at it. I do think there's room for a bit of improvement, though (Deep shadow areas with no detail, for instance). That's why I haven't given it a 10. Great work, nevertheless.

L O U V R E S Q U E
by benpictures

Comment:
I've been there. It's almost impossible to take a bad picture at that place. Candidly speaking, it's not a spectacular photograph, in my opinion. But it's satisfactory enough. I think what bothers me is the somewhat haphazard composition. Too evenly divided into two distinct photographs, if you will, and the elements on the upper and lower halves seem entirely disconnected from each other, and thus fail to form a coherent whole, despite the presence of the reflections which create a symmetry.

The Thing
by LalliSig

Comment:
I don't really know what to think of this photograph. What I mean to say is that it has no cenceptual and/or aesthetic appeal to me. But on the other hand it's technically well done and if presented in a fitting context it no doubt might be seen as an outstanding work. So, I'll hit 7 at the moment and later see if I'm be inclined to raise it.

Stranded
by tomz

Comment:
It appears that this location has a lot of potential. I'm not sure you found the best composition there, though. I, for example, would be tempted to walk into the water, closer to the rocks on the left, and shoot from a low angle to emphasize the shape and form of the wreck as well as those nice, juicy colors and texture on it. I keep a pair of wellington boots in the trunk of my car just for opportunities like this. Exposure needs reworking too; I don't like blown-out highlights, especially in this type of photographs. In addition, the bottom part, even though there's still some barely visible detail, is too dark, in my opinion.