Cardinal Bracing Against the Storm (National Geographic Challenge - Drake - 1/12-18/2004)
by Judith Polakoff

Comment:
Either the most enormous luck, or the most enormous patience :-) Have you used a sharpening brush around the crest, and the eyes/beak area? The way that little grainy patches have emerged is a pity. For the same impact you'd need more snowflakes passing - but that really is taking the copying idea too far - but my point is that 'bracing aginst the snow storm' isn't communicated here as well as in the original. Hope that doesn't sound harsh judgement, but you have set yourself a very hard task here.

Vase
by GinaRothfels

Comment:
Myy first thought is 'which shot is this based on?' There have been so many shots of refractions through glass that it's difficult to retain them all in mind, I find. The bobbly bits down the edge ring a bell, vaguely, I think. Anyhow, good shooting - control of sharpness is i think the key to such a very graphic image, especially with such hard edges between black and white.

[no] Angel
by redmoon

Comment:
Fabulous. Subversive, silly, appropriate, and plain daft all at once. I wonder if, given the model, you mightn't have just kept the noise of the sky under more control - I think to have such a silly image (in the best sense) reproduced at the highest quality would be ideal. But great thinking.

In Praise of E301 Spoon
by Coley

Comment:
Ha! Oh man, I have absolutely no idea how to vote on this, at all. It's a quite extraordinary feeling to see this, I can tell you - in a godd way, I assure you. I hope you'll PM me about how you set it up. As to an assessment of it ...

The one thing you've achieved here that is the kind of thing I was after in the orignal is the mad graduation of light across the curve of the spoon itself, just where the handle meets the bowl of it. Outside of that, it has a genuine simplicity that I like, but perhaps not the intensity of focus and closeness. The original is actually in a sense not lit at all - it is all reflections, rather than light falling directly on the subject - this seems directly lit, to me. Thankyou for it though, and I score you a 7.

Highlited X-Ray Frames (office art+multi-image)
by MrYu

Comment:
Pretty good imitation, even, it appears to my eye, down to processing. Can't quite see how you get the background colours and the plain white image in the water, and also your background image hasn't the strength of organisation of the original.

Tribute to "Gotta light?" by Kiwiness
by nicklevy

Comment:
I'm not sure the additional matches does much for this - the impact of Kiwi's shot, as so often with his work, is the absolutely perfect technicality, and simplicity, and sense of perseverence that you get from his photos. Not a bad image at all, by any means, but ... well, you're tkaing on a master at this sort of thing, aren't you?

Balance "red ribbon" 18th July inspired by instep -- Henry Foster
by RUEDISCHMUTZ

Comment:
Pretty good, though there seems less fill light than the original. As a more or less straight copy I don't find it that interesting (nor did I think that of the original, really), but such was the challenge you have to get decent points.

Broken Love
by Gauti

Comment:
Nicely executed, though I'm surprised by your decision to shoot the book upside down - it's good work, obviously, but just doesn't quite do that extra thing for me, even with the broken thing.

Red and White (Remie #4621)
by docpjv

Comment:
In amny senses this is a wild improvement on the original, which actually suffers from big technical problems. What you don't have, for me, is the big bright punchy over-exposed feeling (good thing? bad thing? don't know), and this to my eye suffers a bit for that - in a way it's too realistic this, rather than having the disgned edge of the original. As a variation - well, the set-up itself is so very designed, that I'm not certain of the benefits of this approach.

A Tasty DPC Ribbon Served Up On Chopsticks
by neesa108

Comment:
Nice idea. I think it needs the high contrast feel of the original, and the massive sense of detail in that shot to really make the impact. This ishowever plainly a tribute, and reasonably effective - it's just that background colour which doesn't have the stylish impact of the original.