Too Little, Too Late
by alfresco

Comment:
Man, I just re-encountered this. Quite a tale! And I actually like the picture too, LOL.

cascade
by U622

Comment:
**** C R I T I Q U E C L U B C O M M E N T ****

To deal with the grain first, I'm sort of neutral on it. Not a bad image for added grain, but it's not really adding a whole lot either. There's a vaguely "graphic" quality to it that's mildly appealing.

Compositionally, I find the image a little "uneasy". It's basically divided into 3 retangular sections: on the top, branches and waterfall, on the bottom stream-with-rocks. It's good that the "branches" component ends on a 1/3 line, roghly, and it's good that the water section is divided roughly on its own 1/3 line by the interruption in the flow.

But the foreground is out of balance with the upper components, taking more real estate than it seems to warrant visually. It's dark and heavy, and little of interest is there except some disturbances in the water. part of this is a contrast problem; were the image less contrasty then more detail throughout might have given us more to chew on in the foreground.

Of course, I realize the contrast is part of the search for grain, so...

All in all it's a pleasing enough image, I "enjoy" it up to a point, but it lacks any wow factor and it's compositionally ambivalent, so it doesn't make it to the next level, so to speak.

R.

untitled
by mephoto

Comment:
Hideous border, IMO, sorry. Cute shot tho.

Touching The Surface Of The Natural Mirror (retouched #2)
by sz1_

Comment:
Nice re-visioning of a winning shot. I actually prefer this version, and I loved the first one. Possibly something in between would be even more optimum; the blues may be a little too saturated in this version.

Chulo
by ajschel

Comment:
Leaving grain issues aside, the main "shortcoming" of this shot is a lack of "life" in the eyes. Typically on animal face closeups like this a sense of luminosity int he eyes pays big bonus points. Also this image is overall very flat feeling, with little tonal variation even between cat and BG, let alone throughout the cat itself.

Sharpness and DOF are exceptionally nice here. It's all-in-all a very nice image; it just lacks that extra POP that would boost its memorability factor.

Three Pair
by bobdaveant

Comment:
I had this one pegged as a "hopeful"; I think it deserves a ribbon, if only because it steers a different course than most of the entries and does it extremely well. In my personal aesthetic, this image is a deep, moody winner.

A Place in Hell
by JPR

Comment:
Way cool shot. Love the way it seems as though the entire structure is collapsing and sliding off into the lower left. Awesome work.

Early Morning Bee
by Pug-H

Comment:
I think you did great; it has an edgy, hyper-real immediacy to it. I think this should have scored higher int he challenge, myself.

Deo Vindice
by jmsetzler

Comment:
Glad to see this one do so well, John. One of my highest votes. Classic, timeless, lovely to contemplate. I'd have expected to see a ribbon on this, myself...

Rebel
by gaurawa

Comment:
Very, very nice. Glad it did so well!