girl with sari
by yanko

Comment:
Very yanko-ish! Lovely tone and a very nice portrait. 8

...to have someone to love
by calculus

Comment:
Congratulations on a top 30 finish with your first DPC entry! Hope to see a lot more from you in the coming challenges! :-)

gone with the wind
by halopes

Comment:
Bom trabalho Hugo! Linda imagem.

Twilight Hour
by Brent_S

Comment:
Congratulations on your blue...stunning capture!

Gates of Splendour
by mpeters

Comment:
Splendid! Congratulations Mark. First ribbon in a free study? I'm suprised at that...and what an absolute splendid image to break your duck! Keep it coming :-)

Wondering
by LalliSig

Comment:
Ribbon Contender...and IMO, way ahead of anything else I've seen so far! Larus???

Love the choice of volcanic sand (different) and white for the dress to contrast well against the dark and cool tones. 8

My winner!!!

Portable Vacation
by luvmyaussie

Comment:
Alittle bit of paradise! love it!

Ode to Deb
by mpeters

Comment:
Congrats mark...a good way to finish 2008!

Winter
by mpeters

Comment:
Some haloing around the roof edge, also the highlights in the centre of the image don't look right - there's a sharp drop off in luminosity around the second post of the handrail. It's a shame, because otherwise it's been beautifuly processed with wonderful tone and colour. Compositionaly it's spot on as far as I'm concerned. With a little bit more due care and attention I would have expected to have seen this in the top 5!!! It may still do well!

The magic wand tool is very good at selecting areas of differing contrast, also if you're finding it difficult to reduce halo's, try feathering only by 1 or 2 pixels and then using the clone stamp tool on darken! i.e. alt + left click on the adjacent sky, then left click on the roof (which is considerably darker) and then proceed to run along the halo whilst you hold down the left mouse button - it should do a good job! This method only tends to work well as in this example where there's a high contrast between areas.

A 7 from me! Good luck.

Descent from the Cross
by De Sousa

Comment:
Very 'De Sousa' like!!! Yeah, it's got to be - definately his style of image! If not, you still get a 9 from me. Good job!