The Look
by mia67

Comment:
really nice. try a layer of overly strong neat image and mask it to apply it only to the background... will get rid of that nasty pixelating in the BG...

Another thing you might try is to use a layer of curves to boost the shadows to where you want them and use gradients at lowish opacity to get your light back... The lighting seems to be a mite haphazard in this shot.

Love the border!

Firestarter
by Snake

Comment:
A couple of things I noticed:

#1 focus is good on the door. Soft on the child. This works perfectly for this shot... gives a bit of an 'off' feeling to the child. Being underexposed is quite normal and natural for the 'other side' of the light... This is not intended to be a beautifully lit portrait.

#2 the insertion of the child into the shot is very well done. Needs a tiny bit of a feather or something around the head on the right side... there's a bit of hue or something from the original pic left that gives a bit of 'cutout' look.

#3 a bit of a distraction in the top left quadrant in the flame, about a third of the way down near the edge... this is the only thing that gets you thinking about the background that would normally be around the door. Get rid of that and the illusion is complete.

All in all a truly excellent work!

Message edited by author 2007-06-20 21:45:00.

paola.jpg
by teto

Comment:
beautiful butterfly. nice reaction.

Shot looks overprocessed, soften that sharpening a bit... additionally, the background is No Good. DOF is too great... try taking the greens in the hue/saturation and shifting lightness to 0.

try boosting saturation gently on the blues on the butterfly.

needs more even lighting if you want to move this beyond the realm of 'snapshot'... the shadows are black, where they should merely be shadows. On the other hand, the highlights on the shirt are blown.

seems there is a fair bit of noise too I'm afraid...

that bit of writing in the back is pretty unfortunate too...

Target Practice
by NstiG8tr

Comment:
I learned something by looking at this picture. Don't forget to light from behind... Very nicely done.

PS. What's the projectile? an arrow? a fishing speargun spear?

Message edited by author 2007-06-20 02:53:23.

Púca
by rubienne

Comment:
Taking cat pics to a new level!

George and Doris remembers "when all this were fields"
by redmoon

Comment:
Brilliant pic. Instant fave. What the heck did you do to edit it? it looks like miniatures! Wow!

The Ghost of My Simplicity Howls in the Bones of Her Face
by raish

Comment:
pretty funny. I love the title. During voting, i probably would have tossed it a ten just for fun. hysterical. :)

I'm flying for a drink !
by David Newland

Comment:
wow, tricky shot to nail. We have those around here too... fantastic creatures.

Precision.
by David Newland

Comment:
Pretty cool shot of the bird. Needs some work on the rest of it IMHO.

have you given any thought to adding a layer of NI to smooth out the OOF BG areas?

I took the liberty of mucking about a little. What do you think?


Details on the pic.

PS, do you use a laser trigger? You seem to have quite a portfolio of things in flight.

Message edited by author 2007-06-15 07:38:01.

Double Rock, Double Take UpSiDeDoWn.
by shutterbug8

Comment:
very pleasing to the eye. It takes a few seconds to count the rocks to account for where everything is... that rock poking out of the water really throws things for me.

if only the water was just a tiny bit more still, this woul really take off. good stuff!