Dance Me to the End of Love
by xianart

Comment:
Just amazing. Possibly my favourite Leonard Cohen song. (one of those I'll sing at 3am after a lot of wine when that mood strikes...)



"show me slowly what I only know the limits of" is one of my favourite lines - it manages to capture in a single line a touch, a mood, a story, a feeling...

"raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn" - I love, for the persistence and strength that comes through it. Sticking together when everything's fluffy and perfect is easy, try it when everything is falling apart...

And great picture to go with the song :) I love the low key mood, I think it's a must for this. And you can somehow look at the couple and see them living out the song, verse by verse, and ending up there, in the end, in the picture, going full circle and still loving each other.

Love it :) And I'll race ya for Chelsea Hotel No. 2!

mildly annoyed kitty ready for a scratch your lens
by Melethia

Comment:
Heh, very cool. I gave it an 8 during voting. Nice tribute to the original :)

Missy
by bobdaveant

Comment:
lol I love how unamused the dog looks...

Mouse Trap
by hihosilver

Comment:
Reminds me of Haneck stuff, but I could be totally wrong. Gorgeous picture, and lovely composition. I love that shade of blue!

Biggles
by Imagineer

Comment:
Oh, he is so cute! I want a pet meercat :D

Disarmament
by JuliBoc

Comment:
Ooh, a top 10? Fantastic, congratulations :D

Simply, Delicious
by colorcarnival

Comment:
Aww, god that's cute :D Fantastic sharpness and detail too.
Well deserved first ribbon, well done!!! And I'm sure there are many more to come too :)

You're So Vane
by LizArtDesign

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Hey Liz, welcome to DPC :)

I gave this image a 4 during voting, and, um... This is embarrassing. I marked it down by at least a point for bad spelling. And now I looked up 'vane' in a dictionary, and, ah, um, I see... I'm sorry!!! Probably would've been a 6 had I looked at it for a bit longer, and had I known what a weather vane is... lol I apologise.

As for the image - good focus, very nice and simple. The reflection is really good, and the subject is interesting. And the composition is great - very nice use of the rule of thirds!

Postprocesssing-wise, I think you've done a really good job. One thing I'd recommend playing with (just in general, as well as for this image) are soft light layers - if you use a low opacity soft brush, you can gently paint on all sorts of bits of light and shadow, it tends to make light in photos more interesting.

Anyway, great score for your first challenge! And I look forward to seeing what else you submit :)

Jelena

Reed beds - Delft
by glennc

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Congrats on your new top score :)

Quite a difficult image to critique really... I gave it a 7 during voting, and I think it looks pretty gorgeous - can't find much at fault with it really. The HDR works well, and is nice and subtle too. The sky is interesting, and the reflections are great. Nice symmetry too.

I'd be interested to see how the same view works from slightly different angles - like, would it be possible to get more of a vanishing point going off to the side, for example... Might not make it better, but it's just a possibility.

Post-processing looks really good, except you've lost a little bit of detail in the yellow grassy bits on the left bank - I wonder if a couple of gentle black soft light layers would bring back some of the shadows?

Anyway, I'm having trouble finding any more constructive criticism, so I'll just say - well done! Great image :) Nice score too. And I look forward to seeing more of your submissions on DPC!

Jelena

Orderly Transitions
by Dr.Confuser

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I gave this image a 5 during voting. And to explain why...

I think this is an interesting, funky image, which meets the challenge. I had no idea what the tools were until I read the description, but they certainly looked intriguing.

However, what I personally don't like about the image is the almost-but-not symmetry. Even though it's perfectly straight, I get this feeling of tilting to the right when looking at the image because of the arrangement of the tools.
I think with relatively simple images (objects on dark background), probably the most crucial thing to focus on is the composition, and for me it doesn't quite work here. It almost does... I think rearrange them very slightly and it would.

Another thing you could play with is the lighting. I actually really like the light you used here, I think it works really well, but it's another possibility to play with - try different types of directional light, and a variety of reflections, and see what works best.

The focus seems a bit soft in places, no idea if that's intentional (wow, at f18 it really shouldn't be). I like the post-processing, I think you brought out the image nicely.

Anyway, hope that helps. Cool image, well done :)

Any questions, just PM me.

Jelena