Dark Lantern
by MackFlix

Comment:
An excellent lightning bolt capture. The clarity is outstanding. You can take pictures all night and not get one that nice. The bolt itself provides wonderful lighting for the scene.

Just a couple of small items. The bird feeder or whatever that is competes with the bolt for attention and is a little distracting in the image. It appears to have a little electronic noise you may want to remove if you make a print of this shot.

It could be that the pole supporting the object is just a little crooked itself but you might want to check your horizon and rotate it ever so slightly counterclockwise if that is needed.

Congratulations on a great capture!

Message edited by author 2005-06-22 02:17:01.

A safe harbour for the night
by MudHut

Comment:
This is a nice tranquil sunset. It makes the viewer relax. You have not oerexposed the moon which is very easy to do in these images because it is so many f/stops brighter than its surroundings.The technical quality of this image is fine.

This is fine as it is but would have extra punch with sunlight on the wispy clouds above the lighthouse and/or a pleasure boat coming into the harbor.

Solitary
by Keith Maniac

Comment:
Very good interpretation of the challenge topic. Nice expression even though facing away. The overexposed openning to the outside world works perfect in this situation. The hint of detail beyond the guy's ear without really showing it is a nice touch. Good solid black background. This should score reasonable high.

Darkness of his Soul
by bandit

Comment:
A very difficult low contrast to pull off but you have done it spectacularly well. The detail is great without much electronic noise. The pose and composition are good. Nice facial expression capture.

The only problem you will have with scoring is that some folks will not have their monitors properly calibrated and won't be able to see this fine image well enough to give it a high score.

Message edited by author 2005-06-22 02:23:56.

Need a light?
by graphicfunk

Comment:
Bet you had fun with this one. :)

Nice fire capture and a horrifying (perhaps you? LOL) devil. Lighting and color work well. The positioning of the head and the way you framed this makes for a nice composition.

The fingers look a little funky but overall this is a good picture. Now, to get someone "lighted", do you have to be physically present and do you take VISA?

A Storm Cometh
by sbeaumont

Comment:
Almost a surrealistic landscape that makes the viewer perk up and take notice. Great tonal range and the composition is made stronger with the placement of the small tree on the left in the foreground. For a lot of fine detail the clarity is pretty good.

The lighting and tree are wonderful but not quite enough to carry the whole composition. The image needs some balencing agent on the right like a giant billowing cloud in the background, a horse or other farm animal in the foreground or an impatient partner looking at their watch and asking, "Honey, aren't you done yet?" LOL

The bright white sign near the center of the image is a distraction in this otherwise fine picture.

opening into petit darkness
by kenbo

Comment:
Nice that you filled the whole frame with your flower macro (pansy is it?). Decent detail in the small detail at the center.

Obviously you will be beat up over submitting a flower to a darkness challenge but you are already know that so should not be surprised.

On the technical side tere are a cople suggestions for improvement. Shallow depth of field (DOF) is always a problem with macro images. The ant is not in very good focus. That is either because the DOF is too shallow or the ant was movign a little during the exposure. It is difficult to tell which it might be but might be a slow shutterspeed. You might have considered another shot without the ant in it.

For a macro the focus is still soft. They are always best with razor sharp focus. The color and/or contrast in this image is weak. Both should be beefed up to give the image more visual impact. There is great detail in the leaves that is crying to be brought out.

asleep on the job
by Beetle

Comment:
One of the most creative thoughts for this challenge. The image quality is excellent and the use of lighting to highlight what you are trying to imply works very, very well. You have the man brightly lighted yet you can still see very fine detail in the dark areas of the refrigerator.

Very nice job!

Country Shadows
by rayg544

Comment:
The lighting angle on the building is the strength of this image. For low lighting conditions the overall clarity and quality of this image is very good.

Don't know if the greenish lighting color is the result of actual conditions or the effect of post processing but it does not matter. It is effective adds a lot of viewer interest to the image. Even the porch in complete shadow, which normally would be an error, seems to work with this image to give it a surrealist quality that is appealing.

Lost in thought...
by ankit0621

Comment:
Looks like writer's block to me. Looks like a candle I have on my desk. LOL.

Decently setup image. Content and composition are fine. The blank page opened is a nice touch. Focus is generally good.

It is doubtful viewers will have any problem seeing how it meets the challenge topic.

There are a couple technical issues to consider. Though in color this image really only has one color and because of the nature of this challenge you might want to try B&W to see how that looks. Generally speaking cameras record low light objects with a yellow hue and it doesn't really look all that good even when it is accurate. :)

Focus is centered on the candle which might confuse viewers considering this for a "darkness" challenge. That also gives makes the foreground part of the image out of focus. It could be that way to support your image theme,but generally viewer's do not like out of focus intents in the foreground and vote them lower. You might consider a wider depth of field or centering the focus on the pen to see what that looks like.

The candle flame is also overexposed which usually does not work but seems to be OK in this image.