Original Punk Rocker
by Neuferland

Comment:
Hey good job Deannda! Congrats on top 10!

Rebel Yell
by jaxed

Comment:
Sweet finish! Congrats.

Sex Pistol
by kdeleon

Comment:
Nice work! Congrats on ribbon.

"Kiss"
by Judi

Comment:
Yup, this one had to be the winner. Congrats!

R.

Agave Blue
by sherpet

Comment:
KIller good shot. Straight to favorites. I think it should be "Agave", not "Argave", though...

The Wonder of the Alps
by Neil

Comment:
This one's nearly perfect. Can you mute it very slightly where it spins off the mountain's edge? I want to see the clouds slightly less bright than the snow...

Message edited by author 2006-02-25 19:16:01.

Beagles in a Barrel
by mandyturner

Comment:
GREETINGS FROM CRITIQUE CLUB!

Mandy,

This image is just as cute as all get-out, and i see there's virtual unanimity in that opinion. It's a little difficult to critique it well since you have provided NO information whatsoever; whatlens, what f/stop. ISO, shutter speed? No photographer's comments on what you were after. Kind of a tabula rasa, as it were.

The strengths of the image are its powerful basic composition and the expression on the face of the prominent beagle, plus the muted color palette which reinforces a sort of sense of somberness, so that the viewer is kind of torn between giggling and feeling a little sad. This is all good.

On the other hand, there's a lot of compositional elements that are distracting from the key elements. Most obviously, these include the very bright hole in the back of the barrel above the lead beagle's head and the oddly out-of-place half-rock in the foreground. Simply cropping the rock out to make a more horizontal composition seems to help when I look at it that way. I'd have given some thoguht, also, to cloning out the distracting hole, or at least muting its brightness by a zone or a zone-and-a-half.

I'd also have tried some local contrast/brightness control in the depths of the barrel to bring up the hindmost beagle's face a little better. Finally, the upper left corner is a pretty busy, cluttered, non-contributing element which might have nenefitted from being burned in a bit.

You're also aware you have a sharpness issue, with the sense that the subject dog's face is not the crispest element in the image. However, this doesn't seem to me a focus issue as much as it seems to be a lack of sharpening of the image as a whole. I've taken the liberty of doing a quick-n-dirty reworking of it to illustrate what I'm taling about; I hope you don't mind.

Nice shot, major high on the cute scale!

Shack & Tree
by pearlseyes

Comment:
GREETINGS FROM THE CRITIQUE CLUB!

Alecia, I don't know what to make of this; you scored very well, placing in the top 25 of a challenge with many excellent images, so clearly the majority of voters approve of what you've done here. However, I'm not nearly as positive about this, myself.

I will grant you that you have an eerie, striking, memorable image. It's breaking a lot of "rules", but I can only presume you're aware of that and did it intentionally, and you're to be applauded for following your own instincts and aesthetics here.

So I'm not even going to attempt to discuss areas of potential "improvement", because they'd involve MY concept of what YOUR image ought to look like, and that's probably of no interest to you. If I'm wrong on that, drop me a PM telling me to have at it, or better yet mail me a color jpg of this, and we might develop an interesting dialogue. It's up to you :-)

Regardless, it IS a memorable image and one that makes me look at it closely, so it's all good in the end :-)

Amber Waves of Grain
by banmorn

Comment:
GREETINGS FROM THE CRITIQUE CLUB!

This is a difficult image for me to critique, because there's much about it that I love, but also areas in which it fails to impress me.

Color, for example; the rendering of the grasses and the grains themselves is nothing short of exquisite, and I say this as one who deals witht hese sorts of subjects all the time. BUT, the cartoonish quality of the sky-blue is actively detracting from the compostion as a whole, almost destroying my faith in it. I'd love to see a version where hue/sat was used to mute the sky a fair amount.

Sharpness, ficus, acuity, spectacular, bokeh is lovely. BUT those danged water drops aren't pronounced enough to "sing", so they come across more as distractions than as positive elements.

The composition, in general, is strong, witht he well-expressed diagonal further emphasised by the converging, minor diagonals of the lesser elements. BUT the large, vertical, OOF grain mass on the right seems somehow clumsy amidst this grace and delicacy. Were it further back (and thus more OOF) or lighter, it would be less of an issue. Also, the sky is workign against you compositionally because the color is so startling and domiant; far more emphasis is being palced on these relatively random negative spaces than I think they warrant.

So, in summary, I see an extremely well-executed technical image that's really very appealing to look at, but I see it being limited by its minor, internal flaws so it's somewhat less than it might have been. I see it finished around 6.1, and that's about what I'd have guessed it would do. Nice shot!

Rifflealp Chapel
by Neil

Comment:
This one, to me, feels overall muddy and donw-key; I'd like to see more contrast in the dark areas. Send me the color version if you like :-) It would be interesting to play with.

R.