A new year with no regrets
by Jinjit

Comment:
High points for honesty, LOL. Let us drink life to the lees? Robinson Jeffers had in a poem "Even in the bitter less and sediment, new discovery may lie." This grows on me. I hadn't ranked it especially high in my first pass through, and I am bumping it up.

Wasting away in Resolutionville
by graphicfunk

Comment:
I can't wait to see the backstory on this one, LOL. The neck section lower left comes across as a chin bulge when it is combined with the skull, and this is a flaw for me. The clothing appears to be Camo, even if it's just shadows, and that's a bit chilling. All in all it's eerie, and well done.

Practice my Martial Arts
by bobdaveant

Comment:
Technically this is quite fine; good tonal range, great DOF, sharp as a tack. I don't respond especially well to it, but it gets a decent score from me.

Walk the dog!!
by suemack

Comment:
This is both amusing and startling. I'm not 100% sure I like the hyper-blue eyes, but even wiothout them it would be an appealing image so I give it a good score. Personally I'd score it higher without the blure, but I am sure many will disagree.

Look For The Bright Side Of Life
by docpjv

Comment:
I don't see how this image in ANY way "emotional" portrays the bright side of life, but it sure as hell does it graphically. The skull highlight on the left is to die for. I wish more people paid this kind of attention to the "dark sides" of their images, instead of just letting the subject bleed off into the background.

Mechanical lock gates
by geewhy

Comment:
I'm really pleased to see this image win. It SO stood out from most of the others for its much more meditative approach to the challenge. It tells a "mechanical" story very well, and adds a purity of composition
and tonality that makes it stand out as a "pure" photograph. Well done!

Robt.

Long and Winding Road
by Tranquil

Comment:
Beautifully murky, nicely sly waldo-figurtes in the shadows middle, had to look hard to dind them. Image itself is a tad too contrasty, I sish the shadows werent quite so blocked. Solid entry.

"One Week Pardner"
by JPR

Comment:
Compositionally striking. A dark, moody image, vaguely sinister or foreboding. The cigarette makes the photo. I wish there were better separation between watch cap and background, and that the bright square in top center were burned down a zone and a half or maybe eliminated. Eyetraps are death on candids.

Hnaging out...
by Gordon

Comment:
In my personal view, this is less a candid than it is a sports/action photo. The action is good; if the technical details were better I'd have rated it a bit higher, but the subjects are hard to "read" properly. A selection mask and some levels adjustment on the 2 sailors would work wonders for this shot. San Francisco bay?

Tom
by xtabintun

Comment:
It's a marvelous facial expression. I'd have scored this higher if it had a fuller tonal range and were not so static in composition.