Hatch
by Sebi

Comment:
What a fine, fine image. Nicely setup and captured. Clever concept, nice use of the rule of thirds. Good in every way except the purity of the white background.

Two Too Blue
by ShaneBlake

Comment:
Amazing capture, nice detail, decent composition, like the blue. "White" background is not pure white.

"The Three Sisters"
by Thai

Comment:
Seeing this image and title connected me to you right away. I'm of Scottish decent but born and raised in Salem, Oregon USA. There is a place here called, "The Three Sisters" in the Cascade Mountains that the run along the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Here is a picture I took of Oregon's "Three Sisters":
//www.pbase.com/azleader/image/20625185

Nice, tranquil setting. Has a "Scottish" look about it. You might consider cropping some off the bottom and far right side to better highlight the hills and sheep.

Arizona
by justine

Comment:
Nice pricky pear macro. Good selection for AZ postcard. Color, lighting nice.

Fish Creek Bridge
by AZSnapper

Comment:
Ahhhh, yes... Fish Creek Canyon along the Highway 88, the Apache Trail. Fish Creek is one of the more beautiful hiking trails in the east end of the Superstition Mountains and it begins and/or ends here. I have some experience hiking in this area. ;)

Good perspective and decent composition. Nice time of day, morning I believe, to capture this without high contrast during the middle of the day. Looks a little oversahrpened to me, but could be the laptop I'm using makes it look that way.

Greetings from Cache Valley!
by dsidwell

Comment:
Like the landscape, time of day taken and the flat water. Though this does not work well for postcards, this image might be better as a B&W. It looks a little dark so I'd recomment some dodging to bring out more of that great detail in the reflections in the water. Very nice otherwise.

Greetings from Switzerland !
by Noel_ZH

Comment:
This image will be a top scorer in this challenge. It is an excellent composition.

The strength of the composition, no surprise, is the lighting on the castle and its reflection. The way you have worked it is superb. The lighting of the trees and dodging and burning of the clouds also adds lighting interest. Your framing of the setting adds greatly as well.

The image has an certain photographic irreverence about it with the way you have totally unbalanced it to the right side of the frame. Perhaps you are thinking of the water and cloud to the left like negative space or what is called white space in print journalism. It is not and therein lies its irreverence. Teachers have a built-in bias for photographic balance. I could just hear them now scolding you for such a horrible error. Great job!

That being said, I'd still crop some off the left side. :)

There is an aspect of the image that DPC voters are amazingly tolerant of, but that I feel is a fault that should be corrected every time. That is overexposed areas in the sky. It has overexposed places to the immediate left of the castle and to the upper left of the trees.

I'd correct those if it were me. I assume you've brought out all the detail there is to bring out in those areas, so I would do it with light cloning. In that technique I would select an area of sky with indistinctive detail but similar to what it should be and lightly clone it in using a brush of low opacity, below 20%. In this way you can slowly airbrush detail into the overexposed areas until it is just right. If you try this I suspect you will be amazed at how natural and unlike the area it is cloned from that it actually actually turns out to be.

I'm unsure that splitting the word 'Switzerland' in half using the border at the bottom is a good idea. It looks nice after you look at it for a while, but at first glance it is hard to read and that is generally not a good thing in a postcard, though you see this style in postcards often. At DPC voters, like me, generally to make an instantaneous value judgment of an image and you may be faulted slightly for readability.

All in all... a GREAT image.

Silhouettes of Light
by hihosilver

Comment:
This is my favorite image of yours so far. The orientation of the sunset with the tree on the right, which itself helps frame the extended pier below, gives the composition wonderful balance. The sky color and clouds are stunning.

The tree is a bit oversharpened, you can see a small amount of white haloing in the branches. I'd recommend correcting that for show. Could be my monitor is dark, but it looks like the pier on the right side in particular is a bit lost in the shadows. You might consider dodging the pier to bring out more light from behind it to add better definition to the pier itself.

This is great image worthy of a gallery showing. I'd be proud to have it in my sunrise/sunset collections.

Red Star Dawning
by hihosilver

Comment:
Congratuations on the top 20 finish in a very tough challenge. Positioning the sun behind the pier to highlight its silhouette is the strength of the composition... especially with the yellow, gold and red sunset colors.

The reflection of the sun in the water in front adds to its overall appeal. Normally contrails in the sky like that would give an image like this an unnatural, artificial look but commenters liked them a lot. I'd have probably cropped them out. Shows what I know. lol!

Feeling Strange? Use Spot-Ex!
by scaramanga

Comment:
This image is spot on good!