Don’t disturb the dust
by Ammie

Comment:
Love this.

rage against the dying of the light
by tanguera

Comment:
Lovely light.

Wide Open Spaces
by Lydia

Comment:
Not even close the ones I thought could have been yours. I enjoyed this image, gave it a 6 during voting. If I had to try and pinpoint what kept it from being one of my favorites in the challenge, I felt a certain flatness in the mountains rather than the great depth I wanted to feel. Still a perfect fit for wide-open, and deserved more imho.

"Yes... I'd love to dance, sir."
to Self: "Yeah... pretty sure I'll regret this tomorrow..."
by Lydia

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club.

First off I love knowing I can say pretty much whatever I am thinking and it'll be okay. So thanks.

And second for the critique...

When I was voting I was very open with what I thought could relate to Year of the Monkey. I tried to do a bit of reading but still did not feel I could really judge what did or did not meet the challenge. That said a New Year is brought in with major partying all over the world it seems, so a party animal definitely fits the challenge in my mind.

Creatively I loved this. Tutu was wonderful and the dog's expression is priceless. Too bad the little guy couldn't dance on his own, the hand distracted a bit even though it made sense in the context of a dance.

I thought the technicals of the image were great. I gave the image a 6 during voting. The sharpness of the dog's face and gentle blur of the background I found very pleasing. I did not find anything bothersome in the processing. The colors of the flowers added significantly to my enjoyment of this.

So sorry I'm not sophisticated enough to really understand in this case how this ended up with a score below 5. I guess maybe others had strict ideas of what did and did not meet the challenge. I admit some of my top pics had more of a Chinese ring to them, but the technical image worthiness to your shot seemed to help your rise above others in my mind.

Keep shooting. Glad to have you around here!

Red Light
by sfalice

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club.

My overall impressions were that I enjoyed this image. It was interesting and unique, and I liked the colors. After rollover when your explanation was revealed, it added even more for me since I was indeed curious.

The colors and lines in the blue and white I loved. I also love the concept of the birds as eyelashes. Crazy unique. The only thing I did not love was the red lights - I found myself wishing they were either sharper or much less sharp. (I am not sure I can explain why, and I didn't distract from my overall enjoyment of the image, but for some reason I kept wanting to see the lines similar to in the white and blue go throughout the red too. But that's probably just weird me.)

Definitely met the challenge. If I had to guess on why your overall score is a bit lower than I might have expected, most of the highest scores were pretty grounded in being 'photo realistic' with either very real seeming scenes or portraits with a bit of a twist. There was some discussion during voting where some folks implied they felt photo-realistic was critical to their voting. I apparently love non-photorealistic images, but such images may end up with lower scores.

New Orleans
by SEG

Comment:
I really like the bit of paint effect here. It is so delicately applied, barely noticeable except that to me something feels different from a typical photo of buildings. A bit softer, colors feel a bit richer, real but surreal all at once. All in all most pleasant to me. (I didn't vote in this challenge for some reason.)

arrival
by mefnj

Comment:
Whoa, neat. This really grabbed my attention. I love the bright colors.

Cloaca
by Bear_Music

Comment:
Oh my, love the detail and processing, but not sure I am in love with seeing the backside of a creature so prominent. I have mixed feelings with this image. Great photograph technically imho. Not a subject choice I am a big fan of.

Pleasure Wheel
by Phocal

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club.

First off a lovely image. You have a ferris wheel on the ocean with dramatic clouds. Pretty iconic and awesome. That said I also did not feel an extreme dynamic range when I looked at this image. There are highlights that are quite white and there are also very dark tones in the birds and on the ferris wheel, but for some reason this just did not connect as highly to HDR as some of the other images in the challenge did for me.

I have to say that I'm pretty unsophisticated when it comes to HDR, so while I knew to look for wide dynamic range and whites and blacks, but unfortunately I was a voter who really probably should not have been voting since I probably really did not understand what I was looking at. This was still one of the images I thought was really good and I gave a 6 during challenge.

Luckily it appeared there were many more voters who did understand the difference made with bracketed merged images, and you were rewarded for your submission despite my failure to fully connect.

Nice work. Thank you for allowing me this weak critique where I was able to think about the challenge topic and learn a little something, even as you probably did not get much out of my rambling.

Julee

The eye of the Zephyr
by snaffles

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

So easy and yet so hard to critique a shot that one of my favorites during challenge. I'm far from an expert on HD, but the clear white and black tones said to me this clearly met the challenge. What I just found over the top where those lashes. Just gorgeous. The overall detail in this image really just blew me away. There was so much to look at and appreciate. The framing chosen is gorgeous, there was enough throughout the image to keep me interesting and perusing.

Can't say enough positive. For a horse lover this would be amazing on a canvas on the wall.

Sorry I can't speak to those who seem to applaud as a strong image with 6's, but maybe didn't feel it was HDR. (Admittedly with my lack of HDR sophistication I tended to think of HDR as street or landscape, probably because those are many of the examples, but when I evaluated for HDR in this challenge I looked for whites and blacks and didn't try to figure out if images were combined to maximize dynamic range.)

Still such a cool image. Is it too late to click favorite, I shoulda clicked 'favorite' for this image.