Mountain Tops
by brumer0

Comment:
This is a lovely image. It's nicely rendered, the tonalities are fully expressed. I've never seen an "aerial" Adams, but that's neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned; you've got the tonal range nailed, and it's compositionally intriguing, and those are what count.

Western Snowscape
by goinskiing

Comment:
This is very sweet. It's a little too chaotic in the foreground for my tastes, but that's personal :-) Nicely rendered, nice subtle variation in the sky out towards the edges. In fact, in general you understand the virtues of darkening all four edges of the image oh-so-slightly.

St. Peter's Lutheran Church
by bs-photos

Comment:
Beautifully expressive light, great development of tones, but way too crowded in the frame (I'm sure you were backed up against something, LOL) and just too extreme in its convergence for my tastes. Still, nice grasp of Zone System principles as far as processing goes.

Yosemite Valley, January 2009
by Zeus

Comment:
Well, this is a classic Ansel scene, of course; you're standing in the man's footsteps :-) The light is less expressive than it might be, very flat along the left of the image, and this is hurting you, though of course I recognize you wouldn't have had the luxury of camping out there for days on end waiting for the perfect light and clouds. The rendering of tones is quite good, except the thickest clouds seem rather blown out. For me it's a little oversharpened, but this is SO dependent on differences in monitors that I disregard it. Nice homage to the master.

Reforested
by TCGuru

Comment:
The scene is quintessentially Adams, from his introspective moods, but the rendering falls short of what it might be. See //z.about.com/d/govegas/1/0/P/X/aspensdawnbeladams.jpg for a similar scene by AA, and how he handled the tonalities. You have much of that potential here.

A Delicate Balance
by tfarrell23

Comment:
This is a lovely image, very inviting. I love the keyline on this one, too. However, the softness of the sky is very offputting to me in the context of the rest of the image, and especially in the context of an AA challenge, because he worked hard to make his clouds crisp. Even the landscape itself is softening in the BG, you have a surprisingly limited DOF. Ansel, on the other hand, was known for the deep clarity of his images, he used very small apertures and the tilts on his view camera to attain maximum usable DOF.

The rendering of the tones, on the other hand, is absolutely first rate, and overall it's a very, very pleasing image. It's just that, for THIS challenge, I'd prefer to see it crisper in the depths and in the sky.

Fortress
by grabster2

Comment:
Nicely rendered in all respects except that the sky is not working for you at all. A quick mask of the sky area followed by a black-to-transparent gradient laid over the sky on a multiply layer would have done wonders to increase the visual depth of the image and take it to the next level.

I took the liberty of doing this very quickly; the mask was not refined, so there's a little bit of edge haloing, but this can easily be avoided working carefully at higher resolution. What do you think of the change?

//www.dpchallenge.com/image.php?IMAGE_ID=758541

Winter Growth
by HighLight

Comment:
Very, very nice job on the luminosity of the ice; a difficult thing to do well. I don't feel that the foreground is doing the image justice. I find that by cropping off half the water I can make the composition MUCH stronger. Try it and see what you think.

Snow Forest
by PGerst

Comment:
It is unfortunate that the truncated, central tree is aligned with the aspen trunk behind it; moving the POV slightly to left or right would have avoided this and better expressed the depth in the scene. The snow's a little blown out in the center, also, so it competes with the very luminous aspen leaves. The filigree of twigs that define the foreground is unexpected and pleasing. A strong entry IMO, but one that could have been even stronger.

Mesa Arch Morning
by rjkstesch

Comment:
There's a LOT to like in this image, but it hasn't reached its fullest potential. I have basically two issues:

1. Overall the landscape tones are muddy, local area contrast is needed. Not a lot more, but some. If you look at it analytically, you'll realize that there's nearly as much contrast on the back of the arch as there is on the landscape itself, and that's just unnatural.

2. There's a basic sense of the two primary backlit portions of the image (the foreground and the arch) being "outlined" by lighter tonalities: see how the lightest portion of the near landscape is following the outline of the foreground rocks? And ditto the sky above the arch. It leaves the impression that you were dodging the arch and the rocks, and the dodging overlapped into the landscape and the sky. Even if this isn't the case, that's what it looks like, and it's a flaw, although not a seriously disturbing one. That is to say, the haloing is diffuse enough to not be totally distracting.

Withal, a strong entry and one of my good-scoring choices.