Air and Space
by MrYu

Comment:
The sense of mass here is palpable. I find the title deceptive; there's NO sense of 'air" in this for me. "Mass in Space" woudl work better for me as a title. Didn't affect my scoring though.

View Point
by dartompkins

Comment:
Nice, clean reflection photo, good interplay of monochrome and color.

Shades of San Francisco
by blanceric

Comment:
WONDERFUL picture, but it's utterly corrupted, in my view, by the desturation of half the bridge tower. If only you had kept the whole tower colored while desatting the city, you'd have a 10 from me. I'd love to see the original; was it necessary to desat ANYTHING?

Proud History
by Node

Comment:
Striking composition, wonderful colors. Pity the clouds are so blown-out as to be distracting visually.

Rooms with a view
by bpickard

Comment:
dynamite shot of a unique (and famous) piece of architecture. luscious tonalities, very effective light falloff.

Sky Slide
by qmdi

Comment:
Beautiful, beautiful tonal values. striking and unque image.

Downtown St Paul -10 below zero
by genghis

Comment:
Extraordinary image. More of a "cityscape" than "architecture", but who's quibbling?

MediaLiMburg
by messerschmitt

Comment:
In many ways this is the best "pure" architectural photograph in the challenge. That is to say, it looks like it was shot by/for an architect. The light and values are striking, if udnerstaed. Unfortunately, it's far from sharp. Hell of a building, though.

White Palace
by photomayhem

Comment:
Is this you, BradP? I'd know that Mormon temple anywhere, I shot it for the architetcs when i was a San Diegan... I suppose there may be other San Diegans in DPC of course...

This is shot with what we call "raking light", where one facet is fully lit and the light parallels the other facet. It typically works better closer-in, then we want to show details of surface texture. The overall effect ona white building at this distance of remove is a little flat; the picture would be stronger if there were somewhat less light on the semi-shadowed facade. Often the make-it-or-break-it point is only a matter of a couple minutes of shooting time.

The image suffers also from blocking up in the dark areas; a little work with curves or levels could make this much more luminous. I like the pure symmetry of the image.

So much love and joy in a family!
by tolovemoon

Comment:
*** CRITIQUE CLUB COMMENT ***

There's a lot of love & joy in this image, and as a family keepsake it is priceless. I like the sense of 3 generations at play, and I'm fascinated by how the baby's attention is focused across his grandfather (?) at his mother (?), despite that the grandfather is the one actually doing the interacting. (I suppsoe it's possible that the older folks are the parents, and the woman in green is a neice or somesuch...)

As a challenge photo, however, it has problems.

The lighting is harsh and flat, a characteristic of built-in flashes, which I presume was how you shot it. Notice how the foreground hand is brighter than it should be, and the background has fallen way off in value. It'svery rare for a picture with this sort of lighting to do well in a challenge, although it works very well for family snapshot-type photos.

Even more importantly, the background itself is extremely busy and totally against the intimate mood of the subjects themselves. It's actually a good thing that the light falloff is so extreme, I suppose, because if the backgroudn were actually lit it would be even more distracting.

So, basically, this image has been judged low, I think, on lack of "technical merit", not for weakness of content, and I tend to go along with that. It's a nice shot for the family, way better than most such snapshots, but not really challenge material.

Robt.