Santa Barbara Mission
by bvoi

Comment:
Something discomforts my eye about this composition. Perhaps that the foreground stone thing crowds the building a bit too much, or perhaps that the two objects demand equal attention, and leave the eye with nowhere to rest.

On the lookout
by Xilebo

Comment:
Marvellous. A thorough underatnding of the requirements of the crop, great detail, great light. The tiniest piece of tail showing ... I think I would have cloned that out, it just adds a slight element of complexity to a wonderfully graphic image.

A Homecoming at Kennedy Plaza, Providence, RI
by melismatica

Comment:
I don't think this image works well in a square crop - it seems to me to cry out for a portrait framing, so that the seat and lampost balance the two figures; so you've made it fit the challenge by forcing a sqaure crop on an image, rathr than finding an image that works in square. There are strong elements here - the mottled light and the textures of the seat could be interesting, but to my eye it isn't effective in the required format.

The Bridge
by CEJ

Comment:
An evidently interesting structure and location - I'm not wholly convinced that you've really found a way into the 'heart' of it with your image. Without knowing details and your options, this point of view makes for quite confused viewing: the lines made by the tops of the trees and the hillside, the river, the island, and the foreground trees all work against allowing the simplicity of the structure to stand out. The deep rust colour is interesting, but just not dominant enough in this framing I think.

Man and his dog
by Judi

Comment:
Masterfully done - little more to say really - obviously highly competent. Reminds me of Bertrand's portraits (though i hope you havd a little less fanfare than he does around the shoot).

Treaty
by DigiFotoBuddy

Comment:
from a backwater of the Critique Club

Well, one has absolutely to agree with most of the comments already made. There always seem to be Coke cans or bottles in any challenge, and I guess your chosen set-up meets the challenge - I would recommend trying to get a bit further away from the obvious perhaps, as that very fact will have hurt your scoring here somewhat.

Your lighting and composition really do need work I'm afraid, at least as shown here. Compositionally I think you've made several little errors of judgement that combine to make the image not effective at all. First off, you've chosen a very ordinary point of view: we always see these things from this angle - alongside and slightly above. Simply getting lower and shooting from the same level as the cans - or even slightly upwards from absolutely the ground - would have helped change things, and made the image stand out some more. Secondly, whilst the detail and ficus is fine, the rightness just isn't there - and that area of floor/carpet/whatever around them seems like a mistake: we don't get all of that surface to see, especially surrounded in black, and what there is is so indistinct as to only look like a mistake. Your framing of the two cans seems without point: I realise that you've tried the rule of thirds thing, but an image doesn't just need it's subject placed at those lines - and arguably you've actually placed neither of your subjects on those strong lines.

Lighting is the big issue here, for me: you've managed what might inother subjects be an interesting glow - it seems almost directionless, yet lights the bits we need to see. However I don't think that such a moody atmospheric feel suits your subjects at all - again, especially with your chosen point of view. It might have worked with a radically different view-point, but if you're going for the 'ordinary' then you need, I think, 'ordinary' lighting - except that photographically, 'ordinary' lighting is actually reasonably hard to achieve. With a 15 sec exposure you evidently have at least something to put the camera on, and so making a very basic soft-light wouls help this kind of shot enormously - something a simple as a piece of white paper taped over a desk-light would work. The best recommendation is to experiment with such things.

I hope this is helpful

Ed

THE ABYSS
by BrianR

Comment:
This is great. A difficult challenge you've set yourself, but effectively done. A couple of minor criticisms: especially in that central area, your processing has taken things, for me, too far toward the graphic and away from the photographic - it's become more like a simple plain of colours. The large field of red that surrounds it, nicely broken up by those water drops, is tremendously effective though. Overall, I would wish it looked more like a photograph and less like an illustration, but there's a huge amount of good things going on - not least your thorough understanding of the imperatives of this aspect ratio. Well done.

Awaiting Spring
by graphicfunk

Comment:
Such high-contrast black and white images naturally push the viewer's attention toward the graphic elements of the shot, and I'm not sure that the confusion of branches and the glittering plane of that grass(?) work effectively - especially in this resolution of image. The star-rails lend an element of structure to it, but, to my eye, not enough to hold the interest.

Autumn Dreaming
by havy2008

Comment:
from the Critique Club

I'm intrigued by this approach, as much because it has all the feel of a full colour photograph as a duotone. In that sense, your toning is perfect for the image - catching just the right kind of shade of orange/brown, however accidental it is according to your notes.

In such a clean composition, it's inevitable that the little white blob thing should attract so much attention - I think the voters need something to pin their comments on, and that gives them a direction, because there isn't actually so very much else here to comment on:

All the technical details are fine - focus, detail, light, composition and so on are all fine. Arguably one might make something of the darker area to image left bottom, or that the highlights to image right might be over-exposed, but the progression of light across the image is smooth enough for those not to be major problems I think.

It's perhaps just that the overall imapct isn't so great that has left this scoring only just above the average. There isn't quite the immediacy of texture to the leaf, nor is it quite close enough to show us the fine detail that makes a macro of such things appealling, and that would take it into the higher scoring territory of the 6's. Don't misunderstand this - I think it's a porefectly fine image, but it just lacks that zing, or that difference, or that pow that you need to score heavily here.

Curly, Puffy, Foxy...
by librodo

Comment:
The comment below was made through the Critique Club, after I'd had about seven images in a row from a previous challenge - 'the 80's'

I completely failed to realise that this image was from a different challenge - but I think it's interesting whether or not I said anything useful under those conditions, so I've left it to stand.