Three in a basket
by galatia_n

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

Sure, there are some warm colour here but beyond that baseline appeal, there is quite a bit that is problematical with this image.

Firstly the unsharpness; outside of the challenges and styles of execution that embrace blur, DPC is fairly intolerant of unsharpness images. Camera movement unsharpness like this is the worst received and most easily fixed, especially when I see you shot this at f/11 and ISO 400 - you have plenty of room for change in those settings not to have to live with 1/5 sec exposure times.

Additionally, I think your composition is not well suited to the subject; the crop sides of the basket constrict the image and have the effect of funnelling the viewers gaze upward, like squeezing toothpaste - our eyes end up looking at the dull background of out of focus plate and chopsticks.

Much better I think to have opened your aperture wide open, use a landscape orientation and offer a lower depth of field of the food and basket. I would have pulled back a little too and included the sides of the basket.

Having said all of that, although this would have addressed the technical short comings of the image, the overall subject matter of food seldom does well outside of food-focussed challenges; pictures that create stories tend to do better. Some users like h2 can manage to make things and objects very interesting but do so with careful planned lighting and extraordinarily well executed pre and post technicals.

Overall, I can see what you were going for but the image is let down by technical choices and given the type of image, it needed all the help it could get to be successful in this challenge.

Paul

Golden Hour
by hsteg

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

Technically, this is a well executed image that reflects good photographic choices; you've shot wide open and looking at your ISO and shutter speed I'm guessing you were out at 200mm with your zoom. This has allowed you to limit your depth of field and isolate your subject from the background (as much as possible). I like how the focus is nailed on the eyes and the front paws. I'm less keen on the highlight on the back leg, I don't mind blown highlights but this one stands in over-stark contrast to the rest of the image. Perhaps you could have used a highlight recovery tool or even used a partial opacity clone brush sourced from the adjacent fur to take it down a little.

Artistically, I like your coloration but I think the overall composition is a little problematical, like many full length portraits (including people), having the face in the top centre position doesn't offer the best visual balance, though I've tried cropping this in various ways and losing the whole dog doesn't seem to yield a better picture, so given the shot you got, this is probably an optimal composition.

Overall this is competent work but in a challenge with some very high quality at the top end, the overall relatively low visual interest in this image and led it to be placed rather lower than it's absolute quality might deserve.

Paul

Beauties in Blue
by mrjssims

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

This looks like your first entry. Welcome.

There's a lot right with this image, the overall composition and the interesting-enough light with the right exposure to give your shadows a bit of punch.

I think I disagree that you've nailed the focus, it seems a little soft to me - I think optimal sharpness should fall at the centre of the centre right flower.

I think the suggestion to boost the blue a little might be a good idea, though I wonder if the delicacy of your image would be lost.

Like many, I don't really care for borders, but you've picked an effective one here.

Overall this is a nicely composed delicate image.

Miss Daisy and Mr. Bee
by allany

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

This image scored pretty well in the challenge, largely down to your colours and a most excellent title.

I'm going to be a little harsh in my critique here, so hold onto your hat! I feel it is important to do so because you have nailed the overall composition and some different technical choices would have turned what I think is a poor macro shot into a really good one - you've already done the hard stuff; you deserve a better outcome!

First of all, I don't know how much macro experience you have so I apologise if I'm about to tell you stuff you already know. I've spent hours using my specialist macro equipment and know how hard it is. Technical considerations are so important.

First off, look at your aperture, f/5.6 gives you way too small a depth of field to have any hope of catching the bee, you've given yourself about 5mm of depth of field, anything outside that will be blurred. Nice bee, lovely flowers and what do we get? The bees butt! Something like f/16 on the same shot and I suspect you'd have given us a lot more. I wouldn't advise a much slower shutter speed for this shot, so you may have needed to push the ISO a bit to make this work.

In terms of processing, the highlights on the petals seem to be robbed of detail, I don't know what software you have access to but recovering the highlights would have got you something back here. Also, various filters that enhance tonal contrast would have pulled out extra detail in these areas.

Overall, this is a shot that benefits from very fine composition and colouring but one that could have been a whole lot better with a different set up.

Best regards

Paul

Message edited by author 2011-04-20 04:06:48.

Is there anybody out there?
by CrazyDiamond

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

You came in pretty low in this challenge, I didn't vote in it or even look until now but the quality of the high finishers was very high indeed. With the bar set up there, less special shots were always going to get relegated. Looking up through the field (just above you), there are a number of blurry flowers and objects that are less well executed than your shot, though there are some astonishingly good abstracts down here too.

Let me try to give some feedback on your composition and lighting as requested.

Full length portraits are really difficult, it's human nature to look at the face so placement of the face is tricky - doing it with a tightish crop is never really going to work without great clothes, dramatic (and planned) lighting and a controlled background - none of those elements are here. There was a full length model portrait challenge last summer, look that up and check out the high finishers - you'll see the difference. Abandon full length, crop this below your right elbow and the image instantly gets better, without even trying, your face and hand fall into 'rule of thirds' positions. This alone wouldn't have been enough for you to do well though because of the stuff below.

In terms of lighting, it's well balanced in terms of giving enough light to you, on your face whilst not creating excessively bright highlights elsewhere, but doing this shot in broad daylight like this give you little opportunity to create something effective. Go and have a look at the outdoor daylight portraits in the portfolios of lovethelight and njsabs and see how they use the light. Lower sun equals warmer colours right away and if you are skilled in your choices you can use a contre jour technique to add some high interest.

The overall scene does, as one of your commenters suggests, look snap-shot like - the bush adds nothing and it looks like the only reason it is there is because you regarded it as a cool colour to include. Never let the challenge brief dictate the aesthetics of a shot - a beautiful DNMC will always score more that a dull, boring or poorly executed challenge meeting image.

The title adds little, you are clearly looking into a bush, so it doesn't make a lot of sense. Posting an image in a DPC competition is a communication act, it comes with a viewer expectation of story - many (but not all) voters will not tolerate confusion.

I've looked at your portfolio and you macro with bugs or flowers is nicely made and would have done well in this challenge and your photographing photographers entry is quirkily engaging.

Overall, as a capture of a scene it is competent, more so than some of the others in the challenge but as a set of artistic choices that should be more than the sum of the whole, then I think this is much less successful.

I'd love to see you have a go at more self portraits though, perhaps use one of the current challenges to see how you can emulate the work in the portfolios I signposted above?

Paul

Hula Hoop
by bspurgeon

Comment:
Amazing!!

Inline
by stantheman1313

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

This is strong work and for my money the lighting is perfect. Great isolation of subject with due inclusion of that tilted reference plane too - that, by the way is sublimely lit.

Overall composition is very effective and Of course the 1/160 flash sync speed masks a much quicker light source, this has frozen the movement fantastically. The timing of the shot too is highly effective with plenty of air.

Overall, you've left me with little to critique. I'm not sure I'd change a thing.

Paul

Message edited by author 2011-04-18 04:52:01.

o canada
by posthumous

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

Another comment from me I'm afraid.

I didn't even cast an eye over this challenge during voting - I knew this was yours as soon as it opened up in the window. As I said in another comment, I think that's a good thing.

What an amazing histogram, even with a peak at 4, you have a second peak at 1! Impressive.

I have to say, I'm at the other end. I love this! Full of whirling life and energy. Your title was just enough to facilitate instant lock on to the image and get a handle on it. That doesn't mean that other images were repressed though. I instantly got echoes of the ocean, the swathes of grass like rolling waves, the tree line becoming the horizon itself while we, on our boat, are tipped at the mercy of the waves.

As a viewer I experienced a similar sensation to that I first received on viewing that painting of Turner's where he had strapped himself to a mast to experience the scene - Snow storm / steam boat??

Disorientation, abstraction, clarity.

Then there's the kit you've used, the way LBs offer up elliptical frothy circles of confusion; here they add to the feeling of water - like sea spray.

As you can see, I like it well enough. I'm sure you don't mind the 1s at all. There may have been a 1 in my score had I voted.

Message edited by author 2011-04-18 02:57:38.

The Eternal Nonconformist
by picjunkie

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

Seeing this for the first time here - unusually for me I never took a look at this challenge in voting.

I find I like this image, it's more than the sum of it's parts - the high contrast, the degree of tilt, the subject matter,the depth of field, the title all fit together really well and communicate intent.

There is much information lost in the shadows, but it is a testament to your choices that we don't miss it, those swathes of background black communicate enough of the form of the trees behind to set the scene and define the wider environment without robbing any attention from the gravestones.

I look at the tilt and wonder if the eccentric stone should be vertical, I can see that if you rotated the image, you clip some of the bottom of your image and mess up the relationship between the stones, we do need to see it going past the one beyond. I also think a straightened shot would lose some of it's power, the slight off kilter would be an insult to the nonconformist.

Nicely made.

Paul

Play
by tinkie2010

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

I didn't cast an eye over this challenge, so I look here with fresh eyes. If I'd have voted, I'd have been between 5 and 6 and settled on a 6. From your histogram I can see my response would be fairly typical of the way your image was received by the wider voting audience.

You picked up a couple of 1s, I suspect they came from members of the DNMC police who would have looked for a 'proper' horizon and not found one.

For me, I like the simplicity of the shot, it works on that level but in any photographic competition you get judged on your stand-out-from-the-crowdness and pairing a simple shot with quite a flat feel in the post processing is likely to have the opposite outcome. Here the dynamic range of the mid tones and highlights seems quite restricted, we do have deep shadows, but even these are robbed of a little detail.

Given that you did this with Silver Efex (first version), I think using a less tinted tone (the first coffee one- number 7??), moving up the highlight slider, increasing the strength of the vignette (slider down) and then removing it from her with control points and then adding some structure into her eyes, tip of nose, mouth and hands would have helped to draw the eye to her.

At the moment the higher contrast grass just ahead of her catches and pulls the eye.

I don't know if you smoothed the skin or decreased structure in the skin (or even if you used the smooth skin preset) but I always take care to preserve those areas I mention above. Dropping control points on each, brightening them and adding structure with a very small effect radius is almost a default in my work flow. With portrait work, I tend to emphasise the eyes just as much as I can without them looking like they've been processed. I don't always get in right but I'm getting better.

Overall this is a nice picture, the tilt as used makes a great contribution to the overall composition but I think your processing has placed the emphasis slightly away from where you need it to be.

Paul