A. Peroni, Wine Grower.
by jjbeguin

Comment:
A viniculturist named for a beer brewer? perhaps that's what that secret smile is all about?

His Dreaded Domain
by espy2

Comment:
Slightly mad, slightly funny. The nearly insane processing, especially in the broad brush-strokes with which it is applied, suit the image; but it seems flattened by all that reduction of overall contrast (sky/ground, figure/tomb, face/clothes, gate/pillars), and so loses a huge amount of a photographic sense to my eye.

The Urban Explorer
by rob_franklin

Comment:
That balance of 'envoronment' and figure is hard to strike: I'm unsure of it here. The workd is great, though feels over-processed to my eye, and i wonder if there's enough character in that pose/figure to really communicate. I think it suffers most through a lack of local contrast about his face/head - placed against darker areas it might have been more effective.

Oregon 420
by vikas

Comment:
Nice work: perhaps you might have made a little more of the tonal contrasts here, and operhaps a bit more of his face - a black and white treatment would spring to mind, but that might just be me. The real intrigue is in the interrelation of his glasses and their reflection, and his face I think - and that would give you a real environment to play with, and even more, perhaps, of a portrait?

Doomsday's Pachyderm Charge
by Matthew

Comment:
I was down there on Sunday - and had the 'pachyderm' thought too, but couldn't find a suitably sounding overall title, and so idmsissed the idea. I'm not wholly convinced by yours either :-)

But I love this as a record of the event - the tiny figure of the operator is a master-stroke. I liked the girl more than the Elephant - and she had the chance of the word 'puppet' more relevantly. Nice work.

Dusky Pulsating City
by DigiFotoBuddy

Comment:
My feeling is that for this kind of panoramic overview shot, you need a stronger - much stronger - sense of the fine detail; aside from that, your composition is strong - those highways or whatever really lead the eye through the image, and there's a nice sense of increasing complexity towards the horizon.

Absolute dedication
by LalliSig

Comment:
Good shot. I could see this, although cropped more imaginitively, gracing a front page for sure. Your chosen crop lets it down though - I can see the point pof keeping the splash all in, but it kills the immediacy of the image, which requires a stronger placing of the athlete's face I think. The splash gets you after some study - the face gets you straight away.

E-71 wins again the World Championship of Windsurf
by alexgarcia

Comment:
A fairly straightforward windusrfing shot - though the repetition of those shapes adds an element of interest. I would think a news shot would need more immediacy, basically to get closer, and this is a bit too available to everyone.

London rush hour
by bob_bobski

Comment:
There's something entrancing about this view of Liverpool Street - with one reservation, which is that it looks more like a quiet sunday afternoon than the rush - I've photographed it during rush hour and you can't see the floor. I like the dynamic of it.

Serenity
by alexgarcia

Comment:
from the Critique Club

Ha! Get a new lens with a 1.8 capability and its almost predictable that your first go with it is going to involve that f/1.8 aperture, isn't it? It is a gresat lens, even if I think it's an odd focal length for an APS-sized sensor, but in this instance the shallow DOF hasn't served you well. had there been eye-contact here that extreme would have worked well to isolate that look, but without it you are dependent on the shape and your lighting's moulding of her face for your imapact - and that v shallow DOF has removed a deal of that impact from this image. the primary point fo focis appears to be the end of her nose, which is anunusual choice to say the least.

The light is just lovely though - honest, revealing, not too overtly flattering, and presenting us with na honest, genuine portrait; infinitely preferable to the plasticated nonsense that seems ot have appealed to most voters in this challenge.