Cigar Aficionado
by crabappl3

Comment:
Yeah... you got robbed dude. Just goes to show: people vote higher for things they "recognize". Baskeball shots have been done millions of time. Sure it's a nice shot. But does it belong at number 1? Not compared to your shot. (ok ok, not nice to compare... but sorry, it's true! You deserved it.)

In My Hands
by JPR

Comment:
technically not visually so good, but I have to hand it to you: this shot is surprisingly intriguing!! How in the world you did that? VERY NICE.

"SELF Matter"
by tfarrell23

Comment:
"Hi, my name is Roger. I'm an ex convict. I'm here to talk about the gang in which I used to be... I must remain anonymous." . lol. Just kidding. Nice artwork!

Tickle Those Ivories
by STEINR

Comment:
Greetings form the critique club.

Here we have a basic example of what lighting could have provided to help create a mood in the shot. Creating a specific mood would have helped create feeling and might have added some warmth to the shot. Unfortunately, as it is, the shot is rather plain and doesn't convey much, except its basic purpose of showing two hands playing on a piano. The composition is nice and the crop is good. The use of a shallow depth of field is very well chosen in this case, adding emphasis on the hands and the piano keys. It might have been slightly better to have a bit more depth of fiels though, as we feal limited to look at one hand only. But that's no problem.
My personal rating of the shot: 5. Meets the challenge. Technicaly well done. Unfortunately average shot.
Keep up the good work!

American Entomologist
by connie

Comment:
very well done. I wonder how you were able to get this shot in front of a perfect white bgr. makes me think it was done in a studio... Maybe the butterfly is part of your personal collection, and the setup is a montage in studio. Makes me wonder... ;-) very good. 10.

Cigar Aficionado
by crabappl3

Comment:
excellent shot. superb coors. excellent use of negative space. very well done. one of my two 10s this week.

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition
by Alecia

Comment:
Hi buddy. I say buddy, 'cause I also submitted a swimsuit photo this challenge. Just thought I'd give you some pointers. First, you got yourself a great model. She has a nice pose. Could be better with another expression, maybe a tiny smile, but it's ok. Techniqualy, here's what you could do to improve it. First and foremost, change your focal lengh to reduce the depth of field. F5.6 will yield the best results, giving a nice focus on the model, and a very soft blur to the background. As soon as you start doing that, you'll improve you bathing suit shots by 50%. Next, use a flash. The flash can be mounted on your camera, but idealy, use an extension cord for your flash and have someone hold it for you on your side. The flash is being used to "fill the shadows". This means, reducing the contrast between the shadows and the highlights on your model. This will allow you to expose for the light areas without loosing detail in the dark areas- because the flash will light these up. You'll end up with a model being very well lit, with nice colors. Your setup is good, using the sun's light as a backlight. It's good to have the sun behind so your model doesn't squint her eyes too much. Unfortunately, in this shot, your model seems to have a hard time with the hard light and she's squinting her eyes. You can ask her to keep her eyes shut, and countdown before taking the shot. This way, she will open her eyes when you shoot and you'll loose the squinting effect. Last but not least, you might want to reconsider the crop of this photo and crop it a littlebit closer to the model, especially on the left side (maybe remove half of the negative space on the left). That's about it... I gave you a 6, but I beleive you had all the elements to pull off a 9 (with a littlebit more experience and the tips I gave you above). Hope I was of some help. Take care. DrJOnes. PS. Oh, by the way, congrats on taking a chance... shots with "sexyness" in them are usually not very well received on DPChallenge. Just know that you'll never win with a sexy shot, even if it's a very good sexy shot... Mine this week isn't doing very well, but has all the elements to be a top cover shot. People at DPChallenge tend to prefer very basic things- nothing too controversial. Women in bikinis are not well rated by the women and the prudes on DPChallenge.

my office skills
by ursula

Comment:
Nice composition. Well executed. Simple, yet efficient.

Paperclips
by sagestudio

Comment:
Very nice shot. Excellent composition. Original use of paperclips. Lovely hair detail. Too bad the skin seems to have so much grain in it... I wonder where it comes from? 8

one for the scrapbook
by indigo997

Comment:
Lovely setup. Very retro. Superb. 10