Too Late - indeed
by zxaar

Comment:
I really hope this wasn't set up: but I have remarkably little optimism for that. Has a good sense of the imstant shot for the situation - nice and shiny would have defeated the joke I guess. Funny also - but the joke doesn't last everso: it's a one-liner in that sense, requiring a swift move on to the next gag. Can't see you scoring well without finding a bit more depth to things.

Spirits
by ubique

Comment:
I suspect maay won't like it, but I always find that this depth of border adds a certain sophistication to a shot. There is some capture of mood here, and ths lishgtly unorthodix composition is well done, and effective.

Dawn's Early Light
by qmdi

Comment:
Long exposure to get that misted effect, I'd guess - from the intensity of the lights and the brightness of the sky. Has a dreamy quality, for sure, and the tonality captured on the structure is well done.

Street Santa
by Joey Lawrence

Comment:
I don't go a bundle on the processing - puts it more into the field of painting than photography, for me. Of course, the detail and all that stuff is everso well done, and the knackered quality of the geezer's clothes, and his little prison tattoo add a contrast to his ;'cheerful' santa hat. I think I don't like the gaze into camera - inevitably, that becomes a performance thing - and the shot becomes a simple portrait. Perhaps I work too much with performance, but perhaps an idea of the photographer not being part of the story - and you undoubtedly are, when your subject fixes his gaze on you - is old hat, and belongs to a documentary idea that the world has left behind; nevertheless, that engagement pushed an absence of authenticity into this shot: he knows you're shooting, and so what he is at this moment is perhaps less real.

My first reaction was that I wanted to know more of his environment - and then, of course, from the posters on the lamppost, and the newspaper box (?), it is clear enough. People, I think, don't exist in isolation - a difficulty I have with more portraits. People are part of their environment, and both contribute to it and belong to it; and without it, however battered and entrancig their face, I find them rather meaningless, perhaps. I'm not sure, as I write, that that's anything to be proud of.

This might well be the most interesting shot in this challenge, however - I'm just expressing the thoughts that spring to mind from it - and anything that prompts thoughts like that has to be a good photograph. I just want more documentary (which we get little enough of here), and less 'study' - of which we get far too much, though rarely with this kind of love.

Horsepower
by lynnesite

Comment:
I think you just win the sub-competition of horse portraits - there's a sense of blatant processing that is rather a turn-off here, although the definition of the animal just about lets you get away with it. There's a good sense of motion, and of grance and strength, which is well, and usefully, caught, but that lightned background and a feeling of sentimentality doesn't hang well for me with the idea of horse.

Exploding
by garlic

Comment:
Excellent detail and a strong sense of light - well planned grown-up shooting. I'm not sure that a judicious crop at the top mightn't have strengthened the composition - you've left me expecting more at top of frame, and pulling my eye from that interesting structure of frozen water which you've placed dead centre. Even that progression to black isn't enough to hold the eye at the top.

Color of Snow
by loriprophoto

Comment:
There are two very strong horse portraits in this challenge, and I can't choose between them. This, as does this other, holds a great sense of the power of the animal, of the weight, and shape and strength of it. I like it for that - but i think your background and framing generally let the shot down otherwise: to do really well here you need to get away from that very cluttered scene. nevertheless, you've captured a lot more than a trite sunset, which makes this far more interesting than most shots.

xx
by messerschmitt

Comment:
This is slightly reminiscent of Kertesz' famous Washington Square shots - making use of the inevitable contrast in the scene to emphasise the graphic world. I don't think it's absolutely successful, though: there are stong elements - the first tree certainly, and the lines of the fences - but it doesn't have quite the clarity of composition to emphasise those lines strongly enough. A good treatment, but it steers to close to cluttered to my eye.

Tormented Soul
by jmritz

Comment:
Not sure this is successful, but it's far more interesting than the rather humdrum bulk of this challenge. My impression is that the chaos of those branches is your reference for 'tormented' - but if that's the case i think I'd want a heap more contrast there. If that isn't your aim, then I don't understand this shot.

Lights of the Beyond
by andri

Comment:
An interesting presentation - as much for the monochromatic treatment as anything, I think. This free study seems to have been treated as a landscape challenge, and this at least adds more drama. It's striking, but not overly arresting.