Tovrea Castle, Phoenix
by BAMartin

Comment:
Ooh but there's some weird artefactness going down here. It seems to be straight-out-of-camera aspect ratio, so I'm fairly confident in suggesting your post-rocessing is letting you down a fair bit.

Aside from which (and I expect most people will only have commented on the blocky sky), I think you have the beginnings of a good shot here - but only the beginning, I'm afraid: I like the idea of including some foreground interest, in that wall and cactus, but you seem to have had to stretch things to include them and thus relegated the interest in your main subject too much - that cactus is almost as strong a presence as the castle, and that surely isn't what you intended. But you have at least not presented a head on boring shot just of the castle, so points for that. Is it worth my suggesting you have a look round and see how other similar compsitions have been worked?

Mt. Soledad
by rkligman

Comment:
like this - particularly your inclusion, and so strongly, of the fence - adds a sinister edge ot it, and takes it away from the bland shot it might otherwise have been. It has a feeling of ... well, not out-of-focus, but of not being quite sharp, and it bothers my vision a little.

The House on the Hill
by livingfiction

Comment:
There's perhaps just a bit too much wide-angle distortion here - it doesn't quite suit the type of image this is - this clean, documentary style of shot - so the building just seem strange. Neatly done otherwise, though.

Beachy Head
by marbo

Comment:
Wonderful composition - a perfect example of leading lines, really. Strong sense of scale, good sky. An enjoyable image.

Town Square Heros
by Prof_Fate

Comment:
something unbalances this - I think it's the off-setting of the trees, and the centring of the silhouetted statue. Placing the light there is effective, but it's almost as if the eye expects the statue to be to the right of frame, and it isn't. Nice approach, though, all the same.

Sun Voyager and the Moon
by Gauti

Comment:
Quite a neat shot. Not sure about the negative space - at least, the amount of it -what for? Technically good, though, and the light is dealt with very efficiently.

Oregon Coast
by Zoomdak

Comment:
Seems disorganised - I get no sense of the real subject of the shot - the Haystack? The haze? The light? Lacking clarity and I can't see that the noise helps anything - it's too orthodix a scene to be a dirty image.

Botanical Gardens early morning
by Pooba

Comment:
I do like the sense of light through the frosted-looking windows: very well captured. Besides that, I'm not quite sure what your point is with this image.

The Leatherlips Sculpture
by xtabintun

Comment:
Now James - had a feeling that this was going to be your subject. It's beautifully done, as far as it goes: perfect light for the image, great capture of the fill-in cold daylight on the reverse side of the face. Good detail, good exposure, all that technical stuff ... but I don't see what there is more than a simple documentary image of the sculpture. It's an extraordinary thing in itself - but your photograph is just a record of that thing, not an image that communicates anything more about it to me - unlike your previous shot of it, which had a ost of other implications to my mind and eye. Obviously, I've no idea what your options were - I don't know the place ... but this, to me, is too straightforward. 6

WW II Japanese Interment Camp
by bruski

Comment:
My first impression is that this lacks something. Good sky, though you seem to have lost control of the brighness of the white in the clouds somewhat. I think my problem is with the tonality of the ground areas - all those greys merge together, there doesn't seem to be much variety of of shade there, and that prevents the buildings fro standing out, tends to merge this into a single landscape, rather than a study of the buildings and the immensity of their location. Great subject, pther than that a great treatment - I like the fact that you seem to have set yourself a real challenge with this shot, and I think you've come close to achieving it - I wonder if a different light would have helped - a lower sun, later in the day.