embroidery
by mitalapo

Comment:
One of my highest scoring entries - thanks for offering up such a lovely image.

Wonder
by UrfaK

Comment:
I'm not a fan of the subject but I suppose such things go on.

However, I think this is one of the stronger entries. Nicely done.

Watching and Waiting
by sjhuls

Comment:
One of my highest scores given out - one of the few that hit the mark.

Great stuff.

The Net
by MArteSi

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

Congratulations on your strong (and well deserved) finish. There area number of elements in this photograph that conspire to make it highly successful. The colours obviously hit the mark for this challenge but I think the strong contrast also contributes a great deal to the overall image; throw in the great DOF / focus and the leading lines and we have a winner (well 4th place anyway!).

My favourite part of the image is the play of shadows on the main column but I also like how purposefully placed the confluence of structures is in your frame, right on a ROF intersection. Communicates intent; I like that.

Overall there isn't much that I can suggest to improve this - I think it's pretty much an optimal edit for this scene.

Three in a basket
by galatia_n

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

Sure, there are some warm colour here but beyond that baseline appeal, there is quite a bit that is problematical with this image.

Firstly the unsharpness; outside of the challenges and styles of execution that embrace blur, DPC is fairly intolerant of unsharpness images. Camera movement unsharpness like this is the worst received and most easily fixed, especially when I see you shot this at f/11 and ISO 400 - you have plenty of room for change in those settings not to have to live with 1/5 sec exposure times.

Additionally, I think your composition is not well suited to the subject; the crop sides of the basket constrict the image and have the effect of funnelling the viewers gaze upward, like squeezing toothpaste - our eyes end up looking at the dull background of out of focus plate and chopsticks.

Much better I think to have opened your aperture wide open, use a landscape orientation and offer a lower depth of field of the food and basket. I would have pulled back a little too and included the sides of the basket.

Having said all of that, although this would have addressed the technical short comings of the image, the overall subject matter of food seldom does well outside of food-focussed challenges; pictures that create stories tend to do better. Some users like h2 can manage to make things and objects very interesting but do so with careful planned lighting and extraordinarily well executed pre and post technicals.

Overall, I can see what you were going for but the image is let down by technical choices and given the type of image, it needed all the help it could get to be successful in this challenge.

Paul

Golden Hour
by hsteg

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

Technically, this is a well executed image that reflects good photographic choices; you've shot wide open and looking at your ISO and shutter speed I'm guessing you were out at 200mm with your zoom. This has allowed you to limit your depth of field and isolate your subject from the background (as much as possible). I like how the focus is nailed on the eyes and the front paws. I'm less keen on the highlight on the back leg, I don't mind blown highlights but this one stands in over-stark contrast to the rest of the image. Perhaps you could have used a highlight recovery tool or even used a partial opacity clone brush sourced from the adjacent fur to take it down a little.

Artistically, I like your coloration but I think the overall composition is a little problematical, like many full length portraits (including people), having the face in the top centre position doesn't offer the best visual balance, though I've tried cropping this in various ways and losing the whole dog doesn't seem to yield a better picture, so given the shot you got, this is probably an optimal composition.

Overall this is competent work but in a challenge with some very high quality at the top end, the overall relatively low visual interest in this image and led it to be placed rather lower than it's absolute quality might deserve.

Paul

Aussie Wash Down
by dazza17

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

This is a superb shot - it communicates warmth very effectively, the deep blues don't detract from that effect at all. I think the figure brings a lot of life to the image and the city on the horizon makes this pretty special. The time of day you shot this is just perfect, the long shadows work really well.

I do wonder if including the sun and making this a contre jour shot may have worked too, though of course you may have just lost all of your contrast.

I think your overall composition, sharpness, coloration are all spot on - leaves me with very little to critique.

With your eye for an image, your first ribbon can't be too far away.

Paul

Beauties in Blue
by mrjssims

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

This looks like your first entry. Welcome.

There's a lot right with this image, the overall composition and the interesting-enough light with the right exposure to give your shadows a bit of punch.

I think I disagree that you've nailed the focus, it seems a little soft to me - I think optimal sharpness should fall at the centre of the centre right flower.

I think the suggestion to boost the blue a little might be a good idea, though I wonder if the delicacy of your image would be lost.

Like many, I don't really care for borders, but you've picked an effective one here.

Overall this is a nicely composed delicate image.

Window Flowers
by rneuren

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

First entry eh? Well there's a lot that you've got right here and some stuff that could be a lot better.

The good stuff: your colour picks here are bang on, those reds, oranges and yellows are a perfect match for the challenge. You also used the light really well, it make the flowers glow. Your exposure too is pretty good I think.

The stuff that could be better. Unedited..... never going to cut it challenge-wise unless it is a minimal editing challenge, then it's straight out of the camera for all of us. Here the off verticals cry out to be straightened and your flowers are undersold against a fairly dull backdrop - straighten and crop as a minimum; find the area of optimal interest and crop to that. Also, try to think how this looks on the screen... we only get 800 X 800 pixels to play with so every move from a square crop diminishes what you can show. Now, I definitely not advocating you always enter square cropped images but you should always ask yourself what parts of the image outside of a square crop contribute positively to the impact of the image. Try straightening and then cropping this image to the bottom right corner so that you bottom edge intersects where the shadow meets the edge of the shelf, then the left edge of the image along the line of the edge of the frame just outside the petals of the left flower and then across the top just above the upper flower. I imagine that will make more of what you've got. Or, if you want to keep the context of the window (and I can see how you might, crop it half way between the flower and the top of the image. As you lose height, you'll gain width making the flowers more prominent.

I can think of other stuff I'd do in the edit, but for the most part they require dedicated software - if you don't have any you'll need to get some if you want to approach the quality of the images you see on the front page.

I'll leave it at that for now - good luck with future challenges

Paul

Miss Daisy and Mr. Bee
by allany

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club:

This image scored pretty well in the challenge, largely down to your colours and a most excellent title.

I'm going to be a little harsh in my critique here, so hold onto your hat! I feel it is important to do so because you have nailed the overall composition and some different technical choices would have turned what I think is a poor macro shot into a really good one - you've already done the hard stuff; you deserve a better outcome!

First of all, I don't know how much macro experience you have so I apologise if I'm about to tell you stuff you already know. I've spent hours using my specialist macro equipment and know how hard it is. Technical considerations are so important.

First off, look at your aperture, f/5.6 gives you way too small a depth of field to have any hope of catching the bee, you've given yourself about 5mm of depth of field, anything outside that will be blurred. Nice bee, lovely flowers and what do we get? The bees butt! Something like f/16 on the same shot and I suspect you'd have given us a lot more. I wouldn't advise a much slower shutter speed for this shot, so you may have needed to push the ISO a bit to make this work.

In terms of processing, the highlights on the petals seem to be robbed of detail, I don't know what software you have access to but recovering the highlights would have got you something back here. Also, various filters that enhance tonal contrast would have pulled out extra detail in these areas.

Overall, this is a shot that benefits from very fine composition and colouring but one that could have been a whole lot better with a different set up.

Best regards

Paul

Message edited by author 2011-04-20 04:06:48.