Grandma's kitchen
by kiwiness

Comment:
Congrats RIBBON-BOY! :) Shame the girl in the house beat you, think you better get used to it, muahahahaha! :P

Anno 1870
by Anastasia

Comment:
Oh I almost forgot, go the MAGNIFICENT 7!!!

Anno 1870
by Anastasia

Comment:
Congrats on your FIRST blue ribbon, notice I say first cause I think you´ll get lots more in the future :) Oh and tell Gary that his days as the ruler of DPC are numbered cause we obviously have a new German based ribbon hog in the making ;)

white
by hopper

Comment:
Congrats dude, that was very close ;)

Blue Eyes...Green Nose
by DrAchoo

Comment:
Congrats dude, you overtook me in the final sprint! :) Way to go starting out as our new star member of the magnificent 7! Weeee :)

Inferno
by kiwiness

Comment:

Originally posted by Anastasia: congratulations ribbon-boy :)..wanna cuppa?

Now there is your superhero name!!! RIBBON-BOY!!! :D Congrats dude.

Balance
by SJCarter

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

Let me start off by saying for me it doesn´t really meet the challenge, the photo itself has no action going on, for me the challenge meant to take a photo of some kind of jump where something or someone was in mid air and also the title doesn´t help in this regard since balance really implies that the person in the photo isn´t about to jump but rather standing still and not trying to fall down, a jump the farthest thing from his mind.

Technically it´s a nice photo, well lit with the expection of the slight blown out highlights on the stone you are standing on. Composition is nice also, I like that you can just see the legs and you cut off the right leg just above the knee. The left leg though bothers me a bit, think I would have liked it better if it were either totally out of the frame or more in it, the foot being there too. I like the backround and the shallow DOF, I see you did that in the post processing and you could have fooled me, I am usually quick to spot fake lens blur but here it didn´t even occur to me till I saw the camera used and the photographers comments. I like the colours, contrast and sharpening and think you did a nice job with the post processing.

Mainly because of the non jump factor in this challenge I can honestly say I would have voted it a 4. If this was a balance challenge I would have given it a 6 since it´s technically nice but doesn´t have that wow factor, 6 is something I give to above average photos that miss that certain "wow factor". I can at least certainly understand the low score but I think it´s solely because of DNMC votes.

Kind regards from Iceland, Larus.

Supersonic Jump
by madcrabber

Comment:
Greetings from the critique club :)

Sorry but this is a going to be a bit short, can´t really think of much to say about this picture.

I didn´t vote in this challenge but I think I would have given this a 6, a rating I give out to photos that are above average in the challenge but don´t really have that extra "umpfh" or wow factor that make me wanna give it a higher score.

Technically this is a nice photo. The players are in focus and the motion is pretty well stopped. However, this shot would have worked so much better with a bigger aperture, like a 2.8. I assume you used your 18-55 for this shot since you didn´t put that info there. I know guys here in Iceland that use the 50mm 1.8 lens for indoor sports so getting a lens with useable 2.8 aperture doesn´t have to cost you thousands of dollars, I would suggest you look into this lens if you wanna do more indoor sports work. It would have made it possible for you to get the same shot with iso 800 and 1/250 of a second shutter time and also leading to a shallower DOF wich is the main fault with this image as far as I am concerned, the deep DOF isn´t isolating the players from the crowd and as a result my eye is drawn to the crowd as much as the players, wandering around the frame instead of being drawn to the action. I am not sure about the b/w conversion, I think personally I would have liked this better in color but making it b/w makes it more artsy, I am not sure and would have to see the original to make up my mind. I just think that in colour, the players wouldn´t blend in as much with the crowd. The contrast and sharpness are good in this photo.

I have never used a gradient map to make b/w, I use the channel mixer in photoshop to do b/w conversion as it gives me control over how much of each channel I use to make the photo black and white, I suggest you try it out. I´m not saying it´s a better method, just saying you should experiment and see what you like better, I am gonna try the gradient map and see how I like it.

As for meeting the challenge, no question there. All in all a pretty good shot, like I said, I don´t hand out 6´s unless the photo is above average and this has a lot of potential. Wish I could go to NBA games and take photos... Sigh, maybe sometime :)

Kind regards from Iceland, Larus.

Sil
by messerschmitt

Comment:
I have told a lot of people in this challenge that wide angle lenses are a big no no for portrait photography, unless of course you know how to use them and this is a good example of how it should be done if you want to use a wide angle, you obviously know enough about photography that you can break the rules and still make it work. Nice lighting.

Killing Me Softly
by ShannonLee

Comment:
If only the eye were in focus, this would be a very good image. However it is not so this really crashes and burns with that... Shame, I like the composition and colorization of this.