Glow
by banmorn

Comment:
nicely done. check out my very first entry here on DPC. great minds think alike (although they are different shots). 7

food $1... Paper $3... Being told it isn't abstract enough by DPC Voters? Priceless
by Artyste

Comment:
ha, the title made me laugh. I wish the shadows weren't there, but I'll give you a point for the guts to stick your finger in the eye of voters. 7

Eat Your Vegetables!
by freakin_hilarious

Comment:
ha, I tried this one too and could never make it look nice. This is about as good as I got. I just found the texture to be too "rough" to make it feel good as an abstract. Plus I don't even eat artichokes. What am I going to do with it?

10 Years Old
by LERtastic

Comment:
The technicals:
Composition: nicely done. I like the off-centered aspect but with the balance of a subject (the bubbles) on the other side.

Lighting: somewhat harsh. Looks like it was taken fairly close to midday. That tends to lead to some bleaching of the colors and harsh shadows. Early morning or late afternoon lighting is almost always better.

Focus: DOF is nice. He is clearly in focus, the bokeh on the bubbles is great. The tree in the background is minorly distracting with its "swiss cheese" texture at the bottom.

Meets challenge: I bet this got you the most. Realize lots of people don't read titles at all. We have all done it, but you take a risk to link your picture to the challenge with a title. Without it here, it's hard to feel "10". The challenge, of course, is to figure out how to relate that he's 10 within the picture. I'm not sure I have an answer for you.

Finally, remember that when you shoot your kids you will always see more in the picture than the average viewer because you are intimately connected. Some subtle facial expression means a world more to you than to us.

Moonrise, Habaneros, Nantucket Sound
by Bear_Music

Comment:
Good to see ya in the Top 10 Robert.

10 Seconds @ f/10
by shanelighter

Comment:
I was going to have a shot with the exact same title. Too bad there isn't too much to see here.

Awaiting Fate the Ten of Swords
by bryantbus

Comment:
man, sucks to get the 10 of Swords! Nicely put together. The processing is very well done. 8

101 Years and Still Counting
by talmy

Comment:
A really tough technical shot, so don't feel bad that it didn't come off.

You mention trying to keep the sky from blowing, but unfortunately you didn't succeed. At least on my monitor there is no detail. A graduated ND filter would have helped, but you have the issue of the tombstone sticking right up into the middle of the sky, so I don't know how it would have ultimately come out. And while Oregon rocks for its beaches, I have a really, really hard time making fir trees look good on a picture. Here they sorta look like a blurry blob. Blech.

The fill flash was a good idea, but I wonder if it wasn't too strong. Personally if I can, I use flash as little as possible. I often try to light with natural sources like candles or such. The color hue is so much prettier. Speaking of color, since there is so little, I would have gone with B&W here. Or even sepia to try to give that old look. I pulled your pic into PS and it looked like the blue channel made the tombstone more contrasty than it is in color.

Keep trying. If I come up with an answer for those fir trees, I'll let you know. The best I can do so far is sharp sillouette. You could have tried that here by upping the aperture to f/16 or f/22 or something. (you would have needed a tripod then.

When your mind stands still
by AbraCadabRa13

Comment:
You know, I sorta like this one. I think I would have lowered the exposure time so the candles don't flare out quite so much. The one flare right across your model's head is distracting. It also would have made him sharper. It's really hard to hold really still for 15 seconds.

I noted in another picture that the best stationary shots using people seemed to succeed if they had something in motion to counterbalance the person standing still. Of course that isn't what we are going for here, but trying to get into the minds of the voters, perhaps they were looking for something more stationary than a human. Who knows?

Tsuru
by pidge

Comment:
I'm not sure on your PP steps, but there looks to be two small issues. One, the big crane looks a bit blown in the lighting, but more importantly there seem to be halos (dark ones) around things. I'm not sure what that's from. It's minor, but it caught my eye.

5.5, in the realm of my critiques is a good score. Probably the biggest limitation was the black background. I normally dig them, but here maybe some additional context would have helped. It was a tough challenge trying to make paper dynamic, and the cranes certainly are a good idea, but the large piece is taken in by the eye but has trouble keeping our interest.

I usually read a ton of 5-6 scores as "technically well done, but doesn't keep my interest".