Hayden Valley
by Gallatin

Comment:
Nice sensitivity to light, a pleasing and well-composed landscape. I wish the frightmost curve of the river were not so perfectly tangent to the right edge of the frame; I's like to see a whisper of yellow grasses there.

Sidelong
by Tranquil

Comment:
I recognize this gal :-) The pcture's perfect of her, something is not quite spot on about the oof tree background though.

He is mine
by vasilkovaya

Comment:
This is extremely sweet and effective. I suspect it won't do as well as I think it ought to, but I'd be proud of it if it were mine. the focus plane is spot-on, the cropping of the man's face is wonderful. The vertical component of the oof background, being slightly skewed, is a little off-putting to me. I'd have tried a hair more blur there, perhaps...

Seneca Lake Sunset
by ClickNSee

Comment:
Very eeire, painterly rendering. There's an overall greenish hue that I find slightly off, and it's losing a hair too much detail to the left for my tastes. Just a whisper of dodging on the left, and a selection at the forward treeline to drop some green out of the BG would do wonders for me I think. Not much, just a little...

Limeburners Lagoon, Australia
by Anjella

Comment:
While I realize the horizon is level, this has a sense of being tilted clockwise just a little bit. This frequently happens with this sort of shot, and it's disconterting. It has also been oversharpened, to my eye, or if this is how it came from the camera it could use a tad of softening. A very nice image regardless.

camera obscura
by visaksen

Comment:
Beautifully seen image. Totally eerie. The lit window lower center makes the picture. Thumbs up!

Tower Bridge - 1870s Architecture
by jonpink

Comment:
Jon, I agree with your asessment of your own picture. Apparently the voters disagree with us though. I'd rate this a middle-of-the-pack image, myself, as would you, apprently. But congrats on 4th.

Sky Slide
by qmdi

Comment:
Wonderful image, another one of my 10's and a well-deserved ribbon. I used to photograph for Richard Meier, back in the day... I love this shot.

Robt.

Brooklyn Bridge
by JPR

Comment:
Very well-deserved first place. Kudos to the voters for seeing this. I gave it a 10 myself.

Robt.

Cottage by the Winter Marsh — Herring River
by Bear_Music

Comment:
I didn't expect this to get a ribbon, not flashy enough, but I am stunned that it finished 175th out 0f 221... It's one of my favorite pictures.

Even granted that it is subtle and quirkily composed, you'd think it could at least make the top 50%, sheesh...

Regarding the composition, I wanted more grass than sky, I wanted it to be unbalanced that way. Ditto the tight crop on the right. It's the relationship of cottage to marsh, structure to environment, that i was after. Yes, smoke would have been nice, but it's a summer cottage; nobody lives there in the winter.

Looking at it afterwards (and I mean RIGHT after I shot it) I realized I needed a a little more sky (not much) but the "moment of light" for this shot only lasted like 45 seconds or a minute, I ran out and drove over here in a brief interlude of weak sunlight near sundown on a bleak day in the midst of a bleak week near the end of the challenge period.

The right edge of this image, BTW, is VERY precisely selected, it's by no means an accidental thing. look at the window mullions and the fence slats; give it a hair more on the right, and you get a new slat; a hair less, and you lose a mullion. Move far enough over to end it after the next slat in the fence, and you've got a mullion problem and an "almost complete" window, which I definitely did not want. I wanted this cottage to bleed off "edgily", it affects its relationship with the landscape. The same shot with the whole cottage, had I taken it, would have been an utterly different thing. Had I gone back enough to include the door, as one person suggested, it would have been an utterly different thing.

I particularly like the way you can see the view THROUGH the window.

Robt.

Message edited by author 2013-12-08 12:18:05.