Practice
by tbenson

Comment:
Hello from the Critique Club,

Congratulations on a very solid score for your first challenge entry and welcome to the world of DPC. My first impression of this image is that it tells a story very well and that story definitely is related to morning. The black and white conversion is pretty well done and adds a good early morning mood to the image. However, it seems that the voters in this challenge were looking for something with a bit more color, as there are very few B&W images in the top 30 scores.

I do have a couple of suggestions for your next challenge submittal. First, if you are going to add a border to the image, make it thinner than this entry. You used up a lot of pixel space with this border that could have been used to better show the details in your image. Also, it appears as if this entry could have benefited from a bit more sharpening after resizing. Most people use Unsharp Mask (USM) after resizing to bring back the sharpness that gets lost when down sizing an image.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions regarding this critique.

Tim

Despair
by krafty1

Comment:
Bumping to a 10. Very edgy (No pun intended). The out of focus tower is so critical to this image for context. Without it the image would be average. Maybe not beautiful bokeh but very effective use of bokeh.

Searching for Late Blooms
by vtruan

Comment:
Bumping to a 10. Very nice work.

White beauty
by arpita

Comment:
The essence of Bokeh. Bumping to a 10

Solitary Silver
by heathen

Comment:
Bumping to a 10.

Eye Spy
by scalvert

Comment:
An interesting use of front bokeh. I'm sure this unconventional approch isn't getting the votes that it deserves, so I'll give you a bonus point. 7

Foggy Fields
by goc

Comment:
Hello from the Critique Club,

First, let me thank you for including so many details in your photographer's comments. Now for the critique. My first impression is that this definitely looks like morning fog and has an interesting subject. With nearly one third of your votes being a 5 and over half the votes in the 5 to 6 range, to me that indicates that the voters looked for literally 2-3 seconds and concluded, "this picture isn't bad, so I can't give 4 or less, but it doesn't have a lot of wow, so I can't give it a 7 or higher". For some reason, black and white images didn't score very well in this challenge. I also see by the comments left during voting that the large amount of negative space above the trees was a love it or hate type thing. It would have been safer to crop tighter on the trees, maybe in a landscape format, but the image might have lost some of its impact. Personally I like the portrait format and wouldn't change a thing. You have a very good image that anyone at DPC would be proud to have in their portfolio.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions regarding this critique.

Tim

Life
by Nitin

Comment:
Hello from the Critique Club,

First, let me thank you for including the details on the post processing you performed in the photographer's comment section. Now for the critique. My first impression was that the two walkers look like they could be walking in the brisk early morning hours by the way they are bundled up but the lighting looks too even to be just after daybreak. The link to morning becomes weaker when you see the packages in the hands of the walker on the right, as few people on morning walks carry more than a water bottle.

As for the post processing, the blur looks very unnatural, as it starts closer to the front of the image on the left side of the road than it does on the right side of the road. I do like the composition a lot, as the road doesn't just go straight down the middle of the picture and the dead grass on the left side of the road gives a nice secondary subject to look at with lots of detail.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions regarding this critique.

Tim

Message edited by author 2006-10-26 13:59:28.

The Early Bird
by Kronus

Comment:
Hello from the Critique Club,

Congratulations on a new personal best. If you would have shown me this image prior to the challenge and asked for my opinion, I would have told you that you would be killed by the DNMC police. The only connection to morning I see in this image is the light on the left side of the owl's face. The warm color of the light hints that this was taken near sunrise or sun set. The fact that you received no 1 or 2 votes indicates that technically great photos can score well or that most of the DNMC police live in the registered member group and could not vote on this image. Either way, this image has a lot of Wow to it and deserves the solid score it received.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions regarding this critique.

Tim

Echoes Of Today's Chant Still Linger O -- H -- I -- O
by Elliottjms

Comment:
Have to mark you down for being a Bugeye fan. Just kidding. Nice image.