To My Lovely Kimberley
by theSaj

Comment:
from the Critique Club

A couple of people understood, at least - though far more equally obviously didn't. How to be able to prevent that whilst still being able to submit work of this kind of quality seems a reasonable question.

First and most obviously I think your composition needs work. The suggested idea of filling the frame with flowers has a lot of merit, but also the composition is jumbled a slightly disorganised anyhow. I think you need to find a real focal point for things - that element of your image that you really want ot be the thing to hold the eye, and place that as strongly in frame as you can - the thirds 'rule' is an obvious route to take. Other approaches are to find elements that form lines, or strong shapes, and work your image around that. Also you might use your title more effectively - some mention of 'fade' or 'faded' perhaps might make it clear that this is intentional, without hitting the voters over the head with it.

However, perhaps a touch more care with your processing should be the most effective route. The entire look of this makes me think you've simply moved the black point and desaturated a touch. And of cours, it isn't a duotone, which hasn't helped your score. I get the impression that this isn't a completely serious entry - or at least not the main point.

Sweet Innocense
by cools98

Comment:
from the Critique Club

Being the vindictive soul I am, I ought to tell you about how much I dislike so much of the stuff going on in this shot - I mean, how twee do you want to get? And not only have you submitted one of the dreaded photographs of your children, you've even managed to include the equally-dreaded flower in it, and gone for a particulrly flattering approach too! What's even more annoying, you scored damn well with it!

You see, there's a difference between this kind of nearly-perfectly executed attempt to understand a style, and the kind of guff that lacks any self-consciousness that is so often submitted. I have to applaud you for trying, and succeeding so well. After a quick look around your portfolio and challenge entries I find it hard to believe that this is your highest placed shot - unless you're deliberately trying to achieve the remarkable feat of collected every place from 11 to 20 before breaking in to the stars, HM's and ribbons world ;-)

There are a couple of things I would have considered; firstly, should this really be a landscape format shot? Certainly it works, and even lends a strength compositionally, but would that necessarily be lost with a change of format? I'm unsure, but it would have been my first approach (not that I'm any great shakes as a portrait photographer). Secondly, for all the high-key-ness of it, I wonder if you might happily have taken the shadows a little further to shade? I feel it might have served to emphasise the smoothness of complexion a bit more, bring a touch more depth to it all. I'm not talking about all the way to black, but just a little further ...

There seems, on a minor technical note, to be something not quite right around the eyelashes; but it isn't enough to spoil a very accomplished photograph. I would think you'd be very pleased with the outcome. I'm looking forward to seeing more from you in future challenges ...

ed

Ohm mani padme hung
by beggs

Comment:
from the depths of the Critique Club

It's always tricky to tackles these deceptively simple photographs. I suppose pretty much everything is as you intended, though I'm not completely sure your thinking was absolutely spot-on. There are a couple of elements that I find uncomfortable viewing: primarily the negative space image left, and the fact that the beads run out of image to the right; and the very brightness of that negative space. Noe before you sit with hands on head condemning me for being a fool and not understanding high-key photography, I should say i do absolutely get your point, and in terms of execution from the high-key standpoint it's absolutely spot-on. I'm uncertain though, that it was the right treatment for the subject.

Partly becuase the beads themselves are so dark, partly becuase it's gone so very far into extreme white and thus extreme contrast, I think it asks too much of the eye. There are many worse shots, however, with better scores, so quite what you did 'wrong' I'm at a loss to say. The depth of field thing was probably an issue - many people dislike that one, I know; and perhaps the composition - you seem to have gone out of your way to make the string the focal point of the image (that shift of the beads as a whole slightly out of frame), and perhaps that makes for a difficulty.

I would have expected a slightly higher score - but perhaps the problem really was that there isn't much to say about it? A competently executed image, but with a couple of weird choices the point of which is difficult to determine? Maybe ...

Apple blossom
by 2mccs

Comment:
from the Critique Club

Comments are so difficult to know how to handle - the variety you recieved for this are almost completely contradictory. Some like the tone, some apparently hate it, some like the hardness of light, some dislike it. The only trick is, I think, to look at the work of those who leave comments and see what you think of their own stuff.

There's a lot of good things here, I think. You've understood the square crop very well - the format throws a lot of the supposed 'rules' out of the window, and makes the centre of frame far stronger than in a landscape or portrait shot; and it's well suited to a rigidly graphical subject, such as this flower from this angle. Your toning works well also - it allows some feeling of warmth without resorting to the over-sed expedient of sepia, and is effective for the shadows that make the texture so evident in the petals.

The comment about the hardness of the light has a point, to my eye: though I don't think I would have tried to soften the direct light (that's useful for definition, and as I've said, for bringing out the papery texture of the petals. What I would have tried (and no guarantee of success) would be to put a reflector of some sort to image left. That need only be a piece of white paper held up just out of frame, but that would bounce a soft-edged light back into the image from the opposite side, and that would make the shadows less absolutely black, leaving some detail there. The edges would still be hard, and so the texture would still show, and you might gain some more definition around the left-hand side of the flower.

A good shot though, for all its score - unless they're quite outstanding, flowers often get knocked quite hard in the voting.

Curly, Puffy, Foxy...
by librodo

Comment:
from the back of the class of the Critique Club

you really need a critique, Manny? And from me?

I'd be intrigued to know, given your chosen approach to photography (i.e. the portrait) - (at least as your work is presented to us at DPC) - whether your experience of the 80's is actually one of female fashion, or whether this is just the kind of photograph you take. Whether or no, you certainly have a stronger grasp of the period than the winners of this challenge - I find it bizarre that even in the wonderfully ephemeral world of street fashion the general belief is that the 'punk thing' was part of the 80's, rather than the 70's.

And the use of 4500? Challenging yourself? Not carrying the D200 everywhere? But you still proove that your technical finesse is not dependent on the expense of your camera. There is of course nothing to 'criticise', and nothing to 'critique' in your technical work - I'm more than certain that I could teach you nothing, anyhow. I would make the point that you've probably sacrificed too much frame-space to her face, and cropped too much of the clothing to really make this register for this challenge - unless this is intended as an illustration of period make-up, in which case your title is, at the very least, strange. Off-the-shoulder mohair is definitely of the time (oh, I remember some of my sister's friends ...), and probably the little wristlets, but in this image I think you've just relegated them too far for immediate impact - and without your trademark lighting the face doesn't quite register with your usual punch. The detail, colour, focus, and composition are as ever exemplary, although, to my eye, rather obvious and expected.

For an important historical period - the end and ending of the soviet experiment was as momentous worldwide as any other event of the 20th century, certainly in terms of its effects on people; the first sowing of the roots of the digital community likewise growing to move us into the strange new world we're part of - people's choices of ways to illustrate it are proving to be rather bizarre; but of course, ther's something of a fear of the serious here, so it's difficult to assess.

All the best

Ed

Glasnost
by LevT

Comment:
from the Critique Club

It's refreshing to read some suitable details written for a shot, rather than the everlasting lists of EXIF data, or the simple and dismissive 'N/A' - especially when asking for a CC piece on a photo. Thankyou for that, and thankyou for some way in to this image.

The difficulty, of course, is that in an Anglophone website, and a predominantly US-populated community, not only the Russian but even more the Cyrillic script is, I think, liable to alienate many voters. People just aren't going to give an image the time required to make a decent assessment. But you know this - your collection of ribbons tells me you know how to score here when you want to.

More than simply for the Russians, the eastern europeans, the primary moments of the 80's were about dissent against the autocratic regimes - not only the entire process of the 'velvet' revolutions, but also one recalls Tianenmen Square - arguably, photographically, the difining image of the period is of the young student stopping the tanks in the square.

This approach - I don't know: it has a certain obviousness, a certain blatant set-up quality that seems at odds to me with your message, with the intent of the image. I wonder if, perhaps, you've actually brought a rather 'western' cleanliness of image, of organisation of elements, to something that purports to illustrate a different world. The perfectness of the colour, the smoothness of light, the level of detail makes it absolutely clear that this is not only utterly 'posed', but also utterly digital and modern - modern in the sense of 'of the early years of the 21st century, rather than of a time of hiddenness, censorship and the years immediately before the real strike of the digital revolution - audio, in the form of the CD, had struck for sure (I was a student and yet had a CD player), but the internet, the ubiquity of the PC, and digital imaging were only on the horizon. For the purposes of this illustration, would you not want a greater feeling of desertion, of the forgotten: dust and cobwebs and a sense of a room forever locked?

Your choices are, of course, perfectly valid. The image was never going to resonate with the voters here in general: many are too young, few would give the image the time it deserves, and you only need glance at the winning images in this challenge to realise that what any period of history really means to people is the fashions of the time. Supposedly the ephemera - but if we ever needed a reminder of that ephemera you could take this challenge as an example. It's an indictment, but it's probably futile to resist - and the rise of this medium, the fact that anyone can publish whatever hits their mark, will lend it strength. Im' glad to see, however, that there are one or two people who will still resist that flow of nonsense. Thanks for a thought-provoking image.

ed

Urban Legend
by Shan2112

Comment:
from the far side of the pond of the Critique Club

From first viewing, and not until I'd read way back in this image's comments, did I have the slightest idea what this image refers to. The mention of the aspirin and coke thing do I get a certain idea. Whether that's because it's massively us-centric (which I suspect), or whether I just have a gap in my memory I cannot say. Certainly very surprised to see the score on this.

Without that important bit of knowledge, it's the most bizarre collection of unrelated items - some form of chilrend's sweet, a dead person, and a can of coke. What is this? Something about the evil qualities of processed sugar? In an 80's challenge? I suspect, for a large number of the voters here - those from the rest of the world, that is, you've scored way below this average, out of simple confusion.

Your composition is pretty straightforward, the technicals are OK - no more than that, i think - and lighting is pretty much non-existent - I find those window reflections on the coke can particularly nasty: all the more so in an obviously posed photograph. If you're taking so much trouble over the set-up, whay not put a bit of effort into lighting as well? A bit of soft fill light, even simply using a piece of white paper to reflect fill light from the right would help the overall feel opf the coke can enormously - and a sheet or something stuck across the window would produce a much more even soft light, and deal with those horrible reflections. Often times, the difference between the winners and the rest is not so much in the idea, or the moment, or the thought, but actually in the lighting.

[1983] CDs go on sale - [1988] CDs now outsell vinyl records
by goc

Comment:
from the back room of the Critique Club

Are you saying that that's only backlight? I'm amazed, if so. Your numbers are a bit strange - is this really at ISO 1600? At 1/8th second you're lucky to get such sharpness - and if you were using a tripod or any steadying device, then why shoot at that sensitivity? Especially whne you haven't made a feature of the noise that that produces in the image. I'm slightly confused by that, I must say.

There isn't really all that much to this shot. I suppose it might, at a push, be said to have a certain brash shiny quality that one might associate with the 80's - but then, as with all these 'period' challenges, the inevitable winners are simply retro fashion shots. So, more power to you for the imagination (though I would also put CD's into a 90's box much more readily than 80's).

e

The Ben Johnson Drug Scandal in '88. (Seoul Olympics Stadium)
by docpjv

Comment:
from the outside edge of the Critique Club

I think, really, those commenters are correct - and certainly it has afected your score, that the image did require an explanation in order to fit this challenge. Personally, I don't find these recreation of period challenges fun - especially given the very demanding public voting; can you imagine entering an image processed to look like an 80's colour photograph? I don't think that would score too well either. So really, I think we were only left with recreations of fashion and certain american crazes of the time as an option.

The other problem is that this is really a pretty ordinary image: the technicalities are all there, but the point is more about the point of view and the framing that you've chosen. It's a very everyday approach to a stadium shot, even though you've been quite careful to place the rings strongly in frame. The trees abscuring large parts of the image are a problem I think, complicating and disrupting the very clean lines of the building. I would have tried to make more use of the curves of the concrete against the curves of the olympic rings - there might be interesting tonal and textural differnces there - always presuming you could actually get that close to the stadium, of course.

ed

1980's Remnant: AC/DC Tatts and Mullet
by hotpasta

Comment:
from behind the bike shed of the Critique Club

Nothing wrong with this shot at all - perhaps some attention to the precision of your challenge-meeting, if we want to get all picky about how to score higher here. It's an interesting portrait, arresting even, and in that sense there's nothing much to criticise.

I'd perhaps want more work on the processing. The shot as a whole has strong elements - and the detail works in the fruit, and his tats, and the face, but I woinder if perhaps the tonality of some of those areas could usefully be expanded? More contrast, inevitably, but then I'm a devotee of a high-ish contrast style - but for me the body shape here and facial details are just a little bland. Of course, in that sense, it perhaps the more 'honest' a photograph for it, but also maybe less communicative.

I really like the feel I get that you want to hunt out your photography in the real world, rather than the strange plastic environment of the studio/portrait that this place encourages. There are a few of us with that devotion here, and it's pleasant to discover another one (presuming I'm right). Particularly enjoyed you 'signs' shot from your profile - proper clever work.

All the best

ed