Shades of Brown to Black with a Bite
by PhilXT350

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!
"...try to use two complementary colors to compose your photograph."

This seemed to be a very subjective challenge for those submitting as well the voters. The "intended" focus of this challenge was to photograph something with 2 opposite colors in the color wheel. This can esily be checked in most photo-editing programs by simply inverting the colors and seeing what the opposite of a certain color is.

Composition:
Your composition pulls the eye right to the main focal point - the birds face & eyes. Depth of field places the background nicely out of focus. The pose is classic and powerful.

Lighting:
Your subject is well lit, but perhaps a bit harsh in the beak area. Catchlight in the eye is benficial to the realistic look.

Post-Processing:
Image overall is lacking sharpness and the fine detail that make these kind of images so strong historically speaking. A slight increase in contrast and decrease in brightness may have helped this shot overall. Your border, though simple, is not proportioned evenly, being narrower on the bottom. Not sure if this was intended or an oversight. A simple way to make a 10 pixel border in Photoshop, would be to Ctrl-A to select the whole image, then Edit, Stroke, select inside, type in 10 for the pixel width and select white, or choose a color of your choice, though white generally shows better in the challenges.

Suggestions/Improvements:
This image fell near the bottom of the challenge rankings, primarily due to the lack of really meeting the intended challenge, and am sure you realize what happened by now. Keep your eyes on the forums to see discusssions so often associated with challenge descriptions.
Things get better with time, as the site becomes more familiar to you, and your camera becomes an extension of your eyes. Keep shooting! I know what that camera is capable of and the sky is the limit!

I hope this was useful to you, and please feel free to contact me via PM if you have any questions regarding this critique or anything else relating to the site in general.

Regards,
Brad

Celebrating Life On The Bay
by rasdub

Comment:
Guess I must be an oddball.
I never even saw the legs missing, nor does it bother me. I would be curious to see what this would look like with more foreground, but I liked it as it is, mostly due to the perspective and 3D presence.

Friends
by Brad

Comment:
Guess PS rules.
This was resized and converted only.
Maybe should have added some motion blur, grunge, bunch of actions &
filters, rotated it, background blur and finally selective desaturation.
Real life isn't really exciting huh?

Ninth Ave. Food Festival, Fire Escape Scene
by pawdrix

Comment:
West Side Story, circa 2005
Nice job!

School Holidays, YEEHAH
by owen

Comment:
A fun time well captured.
Post-processing a bit harsh in my opinion, but the image is effective and meets the challenge well (6)

in Celebration of Harvest
by ralph

Comment:
Good choice for the wide-angle perspective.
Not real strong as a celebration submission, but effective and meets the challenge (6)

109,839 Strong
by Maverick

Comment:
Good choice for B&W conversion, with enough noise to give it a photo-journalistic feel.
Effective and meets the challenge well (6)

Woohoo! It's Raining!!!
by dwterry

Comment:
Not sure if the high contrast helps or hurts this shot.
Good composition and meets the challenge well (6)

"Just Because"
by tfarrell23

Comment:
One left over from the greeting card challenge? (just kidding)
Simple, effective and meets the challenge well (6)

I Won!
by suemack

Comment:
Nice action and energy captured here.
Meets the challenge well (6)