Gaze
by lovethelight

Comment:
Great portrait, Claire. This has just the right level of sharpness in just the right places, and the brown colour tinting is perfect.

Show Down
by Tap10

Comment:
Ha ha, very funny. :) Great idea, and certainly worth it for your first ribbon. Nicely done.

Happy June Cardinal
by Kelli

Comment:
Hi Kelli,

I was actually one of the higher voters on this shot. I like the spot of colour in the frame. I wasn't keen on the border though. I prefer simple borders if any - nothing fancy. One area that this image falls down is composition lines. Most of the frame is filled with the detail of the leaves. The stick is a line, but not really in the right place to make the composition. Cropping in a little closer might help that - take a little of the top and right, and little more off the bottom - but not too much, because the image has a nice open feel that would be a shame to lose. A slight vignette might also help focus the image in just a little.

Her Smile
by jeger

Comment:
This is quite a good image. The purple and the green sit nicely with the skin tones and tree bark. The composition is good, but the shot is really about her eyes, so I feel the image needs to be more focussed. The flowers and her hands are distracting from her face. You could easily crop the shot in closer, and maybe darken her hands in photoshop. I would also lighten and sharpen her eyes a little. I would also title it "Her eyes" rather than her smile, because you can't really see her smile. The lighting is good, and nice use of the reflector with the catchlights in her eyes.

One Foot In The Grave
by kleski

Comment:
This is not a bad image, and many people have voted the striking colours well. For me, the colours are just a little too super-saturated neon, and they lose the natural feel. I'm also not a fan of high contrast, and prefer to see more visible detail in the subject. However, you have done well with your sillhouettes in the past, and I guess for very specific shots, they work well. I guess the difference here is that with the dark sky, the tree is not so visible against the background. Also, a tree as a subject never grabs a viewer like a human silhouette.

As mentioned in other comments, the title is a little odd for this image, and rather than adding a new dimension to a sunset image, it is a mental twist to make the image and the title fit together.

New Life on the Forest Floor
by Quigley

Comment:
Wow, nice fluorescent image. :) The focus here is slightly in front of your subject. For such macro shots, you should be using spot focus and a little tripod or beanbag, but I'm guessing at 1/6s, you were using something already. Manual focus would be even better if you are good at it (but my eye tends to focus worse than auto-focus, so I never use manual). The other focus trick for macro work is to set the focus roughly, and then move the camera forward and backward. You could also easily get away with closing the aperture a little to widen the depth of field. For editing with an image like this on DPC, I would tend to mute the saturation a little, so it's not quite so over the top, and maybe shift the colour balance a little away from the greens.

Tranquil Fall
by arron_christensen

Comment:
This is a great waterfall shot. You've captured the flowing water nicely, and the ripples in the pool look positively silky. The water is not too blown out, and there is still detail in the rocks, which is perfect. Some photoshop editing could help to enhance the detail by carefully dodging some areas in the rocks. The composition needs a little work - as it is, it's all very 2 dimensional as the falls, trees and rock are all very close to the same plane, and the incidental foreground rock is almost a distration. But, that's the bad part of having a shoot cut short. You need time to really explore the location, and look at the scene from different focal lengths. I love wide angle lenses for shots like this too, because they enhance the depth in the photo, so give your 18mm a try too and really explore different angles. Give your wife the car keys and make your own way home. :) These falls are certainly worth a revisit next time you have a cloudy day out.

Model Hopes and Model Dreams
by TCGuru

Comment:
My first thought when seeing this shot during voting was the blue cast to the image. When you are shooting in shade, if the auto white balance is not doing a good job, you can manually set to shade or cloudy white balance and this will correct for the blue cast. You can also fix it in photoshop with the colour balance tool. This also has a very high colour saturation with the red and green complimentary colours, and the bright happy look is a little in contrast with his cool model expression. With a shot like this, the focus is his eyes, so be careful about bright blocks of colour which will distract from his eyes. For the composition and crop, I would consider maybe giving the photo a bit of an angle, so he is leaning back into the frame, with his head more upright. I'd crop off the bottom of the frame, so you don't see the checkered pants, desaturate and darken the background, and lighten his eyes a little in PS.

almost complete...
by egamble

Comment:
This is a nice family portrait, with some happy smiles. I wonder if perhaps the angle tilt is a bit too much. The composition of the pose is not the best - the heads are all squished into the edge of the photo, and particularly the girl is struggling to be in the shot. Perhaps a vertical shot might get them all in frame better, or with such differences in heights, maybe a sitting down pose would be another option. I like the BW, although pay close attention to dynamic range in these shots - the highlights are just a little overexposed. Overall not a bad image and I'm sure the family will like it, but portraits have to be exceptionally good to do really well on DPC. :)

Reach
by goc

Comment:
It's hard for a flower photo to get a good score from me, because it's hard to do something really special with a flower. Flowers are nice, but I guess not my thing. This shot is nice and crisp, and the depth of field is just right. The composition is not bad, although I would consider cropping some more off the top to focus the shot more on the stamens. They are the subject of this image, and the flower outline at the top draws the eye away from the subject. I like the soft lighting, and the shadowed yet still visible depths in the centre of the flower. The overall colours are dark and muted, which is something different for a flower, but the image as a whole is leaning a little toward dark and murky brownish. Giving the red and/or yellow channels (in colour balance) a slight boost might give the colours a little kick without changing the fundamental colour scheme.

Message edited by author 2008-07-08 05:44:02.