Mekong
by ubique

Comment:
Wow, you have evoked a great sense of place with very minimal information. The gestures you captured are just great. There is a technical bluntness used that is both limiting, and very well suited to the image.

Near the top at this point in the vote.

A Rose is a Rose
by digifotojo

Comment:
How very O'Keefe, I like the framing and tones, but wish you had left in some blacks. Shifting all the blacks to red robs this lovely study of some of its depth, making what is essentially a study of layers flatter than it ought to be.

What We Bought
by spiritualspatula

Comment:
I have an odd affinity for images that make me wonder WTF is going on here, and this one qualifies. I like the Andrew Wyeth-like dry brush look of the scene. My one issue is the amount of flash on the figure, it seems a bit too bright, making the already alien presence seem pasted in, as if he is not really part of the image. His posture, nakedness and gas mask already did the job of making him stand out, making him so bright was not really needed.

That said the potential story lines this brings up put it near the top at this point in the first pass of voting.

Splash...
by anniek

Comment:
Something about the brown water unsettles me. You have some really nice textures going here between the water in frozen motion, and the accretions on the piers mirroring each other; But the blue grey and the warm brown are not helping. Im not sure if this is really what you saw, or some result of less than optimal editing, and that takes me away from the image as it is presented. I can see this working in black and white, or with some other variant, but I think this has more potential than realization.

Boatyard Shed, Duxbury Harbor
by Bear_Music

Comment:
Well at least according to your note you can be proud of how well you know the voters. Two of my top five finished below 80th. I guess I need to amend my taste. I seem to have had only one other person vote with me.

All the more impressive an image coming from the Lumix.

The red gate
by tome

Comment:
I always give special mention to the images I think got overlooked the most by voters, and this week you are in that unfortunate position. I had yours and the 84th place in my top five, oh well I thought you really nailed that hovering sense of the turn as the maelstrom crashes by. So either we were wrong or they were, but I still think they were.

lesser shades of melancholy
by Wildcard

Comment:
I can picture this really working well as a large print in a gallery, but shrunk to 800 pixels there just isn't room to get lost in the frame and wander in the fog.

Balance
by MinsoPhoto

Comment:
I would have liked this better without the mirror. The doubled image of the light bouncing between the glass and the mirroring on its backing messes up the purity of form that is so nice in the rocks you picked out. The framing and exposure are very good, but it is such a simple image that the one flaw hurts the image badly.

brycecanyon
by KristinaG

Comment:
I think I would have cooked the sky a bit more. It looks so bright and sunny that the shift from light to shadow on the cliffs seems too subtle, and therefore unbelievable. Had you burnt the clouds and darkened the sky it would have added drama to the sky, lowered the contrast form sky to ground and made the image a bit less bifurcated.

To my mind the hardest thing about HDR is getting the final image back to how the eye took in the scene and not let what the camera took in limit you. Since you can have the full 10 stop variety that the eye sees (and the mind perceives) in an HDR, the temptation is to even everything out into flat plasticity rather than the smooth variations that we see in the world.

I can imagine seeing this image with dark brush with a few high lights, the cliffs as you presented them and a darker sky. It would highlight for the viewer to the area with the greatest interest, and make a convincing whole. Maybe.

Here there be Dragons
by DrAchoo

Comment:
This makes my eyes water and my nose itch. very nice, love the reflection and the wider framing. now if you can just cut down that tree it would be perfect. only question is blue or red?

Edit to add that the nonsense at the front end of the comment was to say I guessed this was the work of the house allergist. I think this is the best of this type you have posted, and I'm rather shocked this finished so low in the voting.

Message edited by author 2011-04-11 21:04:06.