Wheel of Progress
by brassil

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::

First Impression - the most important one:
I just loved the look of this the minute I saw it, but I was disappointed that it looked dull because the subject is so interesting. You can't see the full item, only a tanatalising portion of it, so you are drawn into it to try and work out what it is. Any image that actively engages the eye and mind like this starts ahead of the pack.

Composition:
Technically right on for the rule of thirds with the wheel centre right on the thirds intersection. Nice and tightly cropped so that as i said above, you have to really explore it.

Subject:
Perfect for this challenge but also very very good just as a general image about technology. I had no idea it was old until I read your comments, I just thought it looked interesting and timeless. Sure the wheel looks old design but the rest of it looks in such great condition.

Technical (Colour and light):
Your first two commenters picked up on it straight away. This image has just soooo much power and potential which aren't realised because it just looks a little 'flat'. It's nice and sharp too so I'd stick with the Powershot :)

The other thing to look for is the little details. We're a picky lot here and as we wade through hundreds of images to vote on, anything that looks like the photographer has been a bit lazy on, will get a point or two slahed off it. Most of the basic editing packages allow you to rotate and straighten images. I don't think I;ve taken one straight in the camera yet. Your verticals are not vertical. It's not a life and death thing but it does niggle. In this case it will be 1 deg or something like that - thats all.

Growing its vote?:
It's the colour. Only the colour. If you have the benefit of some reasonable photo editing software that does three basic things, contrast, hue and saturation, then you can quick jazz it up and give it a heightened degree of wow factor.

I am usually reluctent to tell people what I whould have done with their images because most photographers think long and hard about the shot before its taken. Post-processing is a little different simply because it takes a long time to learn and the best tips are usually those that have been passed on by someone else. So I thought perhaps you might not take offence if I demonstrated what we're talking about with the colour here by doing a quick edit on it.

I have taken your image into Paint Shop Pro and made the following adjustments to demonstrate. Contrast +37, Hue +19, Saturation +26, that's all, it took 35secs.
(Click image for full size)
As you can see, the result fairly 'pops'. Yes it is overdone and the blue tinge needs to be adjusted out, but this is just a very quick demo of what is lurking in every negative we take.

Summary:
This is a cracker image that could have really rocked in the voting with a little post shot editing. I looked at your portfolio and like what you are doing, good luck.

Brett

Tying Up
by joezl

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
Love to do a full critique on your image but it is difficult if you don't give us any information in your photographers comments. When we do a critique, we go past just the photographic result, that's what voters comments do. The critique looks at what you were trying to achieve, how you wanted it to look and what issues you had in getting the image captured and ready for voting.

First Impression - the most important one:
Captivating. Draws you immediately into the image looking for the story. The people play a big part in that immediate engagement.

Composition:
The bow forms a perfect leading line. The eye starts with the vibrant colour, and is taken by the bow to the people on the dock. Even the veritcal part of the bow is on a thirds line alough it's its almost impossible to strictly use thirds in an image like this, the concept is there. The people give the ship it's size.

Subject:
I love it. Heavy, massive and interesting. Just look at the bulb, it got me wondering about all the floating containers or sailboats it had met mid atlantic in the dead of night. You see, the viewer is engaged by this image because as I've just done, I start to weave stories into it. Superb stuff.

Technical (Colour and light):
Assuming that you were probably passing in another vessel and this was a spur of the moment snap (we'll never know, you didn't comment) makes it even more remarkable. The bright harshness of the sunlit orange contrasting with the silhouettes of the dockers is what gives this its depth beyond just 2D.

I'm almost certain that part of the drama in this shot is the way the light hits the bow itself. Bows are generally not razor sharp as this appears to be but the light has made it so and it is dramatic.

To get a Ribbon?:
It's hard to know how you can make this capture work any better. It's scored well and 88% is a damned fine place to be. I'd be interested in the effect of cropping at the water line but I suspect then that the bulb would teeter on the edge of frame with its impact lost.

I guess if you were doing this on assignment then you'd ask the port company to move the containers to give you a neutral backgound and maybe have the crew clean up the black smudgy bits.... :) It's the dirty part of the hull that is least pleasing to the eye and the only place I can see where it cost you a higher score.

Summary:
This image is not a one-off success, your portfolio shows that. I particularly like your minimalist eye in Wall and White. An average score of 5.7 is good and we look forward to your first top 10 and then ribbon. They're not far away.

Brett

Message edited by author 2005-12-11 15:02:51.

Collection of Books, Gadgets and Gizmos
by aman

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
Great fun to do a critique on your image but it is difficult if you don't give us any information in your photographers comments. When we do a critique, we go past just the photographic result, that's what voters comments do. The critique looks at what you were trying to achieve, how you wanted it to look and what issues you had in getting the image captured and ready for voting.

First Impression - the most important one:
A little confusion because I didn't really know what it was I was supposed to be looking at. All images (paintings and photographs) tell a story. You are the author who has to lay out the tale for the viewer to enjoy.

Composition:
The confusion I talked about mostly comes from the composition. The target of interest, as defined by you, is not clear. there's no lead in to the picture to show the eye where to look. all of these things make a difference. Do a google on two 'rules' as they are called, The Rule of Thirds and Leading Lines. These just detail that way that research has shown that the eye enters, fixates and leaves images - and they really do work.

Subject:
There's good and bad in your subject matter in terms of winning hearts and votes. It's good because you've shown a collection of things, many things, which perfectly reflects the way we collect stuff in our lives. The bad is that there's no particular collection to focus on and get interested in. One or the other scenario might have given you more impact. So, with not much juggling, you could subtley re-frame this and gather interest.

Technical (Colour and light):
It's wel lit and the colours are true. The on-camera flash was hot and has flared on poor old St Exupery which will loose you points in this tough school.

I see that there's trouble with the grain/noise and the breaking up of the colour. I suspect that you have used a .jpg, worked on it and saved it many times as you worked. What has happened is that a jpg is a compressed format. Every time you save it, it re-compresses what is already compressed and so you loose detail in the file. Eventually you end up with the effect you have here. I bet you were wondered what was going wrong with it.

If your software allows, save it immediately you get it out of the camera to an uncompressed format like BMP, TIFF of PSP etc. Do all your editing and then the last steps to submit it are resize, sharpen and save as a jpg.

To improve?:
There's some pretty easy principles to apply when you are working on a submission that will certainly help you break into the 5's and eventually the 6's. Keep it simple, tell a story, use the composition rules, never submit an out of focus image, take a predictable idea and make it different, try different times of the day or light angles.

Summary:
In looking at your portfilio, I can see you're working hard on your images and trying lots of different things, this will pay off and I personally look forward to seeing the fruits of your efforts. Good luck

Brett

industrial power 260kv
by stumpy

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
Hi Steve and welcome to the DPC Challenge. Congratulations on a good start by scoring 58% in your first try.!

Thanks for putting in your photographer's comments, they help enormously in doing a critique. The Photograph information really helps a critique too. You can get it from your images by right-clicking it in Win Explorer -> Properties -> summary -> Advanced. That will give you the Aperture, ISO and shutter details plus a whole lot more. Be aware that if you edit in any way the file that comes out of your camera and save it to the same name, all that (EXIF) data will be lost. Always do a Save As for the first step.

First Impression - the most important one:
I'm a sucker for snow and winter, it's where my soul is, so my first impression is always a warm one:) Photographically, this really gets a comfortable reaction from the eye and as you see, has attracted votes accordingly.

Composition:
The composition in this image is that of a trained photographer or a very good photographer's natural eye. Whether by accident or design, you have used perfectly the two main basic rules of composition in this image.

The Rule of Thirds: the foremost pylon is on a vertical thirds line. It is comfortable to the eye there and strikes a chord with the viewer. Rule of Leading Lines: you've got the pylons leading the eye into the picture as they have the perspective lines to follow. Believe it or not, this gives the image 3D depth rather than a flat feel. Research proves these 'rules' to be effective pleasing elements to viewers of paintings or photographs.

There is a third 'rule'. Research again tells us that the eye naturally enters an image bottom left and goes out top right, failing that, at least left to right. That could apply in two ways to this image. You could say it already does that by the eye following the line from the small pylon to the large. Or, you could consider the large pylon as the starting point from which the eye travels along the perspective to the smaller one. To test the latter case, I would try a mirror of the image and see which works better.

Remember though that rules are for the Adherence of Fools and the Guidance of Wise Men.

Subject:
This is a simple mood and geometric image that meets the challenge well. Less is often more and this image has that. It's not overstated but a simple study of the one thing that no industry can do without - energy. I also applaud your lateral view of the obvious response to this challenge ... factories and smoke with water/clouds/reflections etc. It is "different" that has the most chance of cutting through all of the rest.

Technical (Colour and light):
This is the weakest aspect of the image. That it scored so well, yes it did, with this flat grey slightly overexposed look is a testament to how well you got those other elements so right.

In a way, the misty look is appealing. It gives the image mood and isolation, both are useful emotively on voters. You could preserve that feel whilst making the contrast a little more pronounced and giving the image some oomph. If you have editing software that does adjustment layers, you can make non-destructive (original pixels untouched) adjustments to things like brightness and contrast. If not, most graphics programs will let you adjust brightness, contrast or gamma.

Take this image and try some differing settings, they can transform your ex-camera original in ways you couldn't imagine. Don't push it though, they're a savvy lot here and they can tell when you're desperate and trying too hard :)

Summary:
This is a damned fine start, you have the eye. See you again we hope :)

Brett

To Industrial Heights
by erna

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
Great fun to do a critique on your image but it is difficult if you don't give us any information in your photographers comments. When we do a critique, we go past just the photographic result, that's what voters comments do. The critique looks at what you were trying to achieve, how you wanted it to look and what issues you had in getting the image captured and ready for voting.

First Impression - the most important one:
This is quite a fetching shot. The first impression is that you want to engage with it and explore it. That's the very best reaction you can get with any image (painting or photograph). That's a double-edged sword in this case because it's when you do look longer at the image that some of its failings show up.

Composition:
The composition is not bad at all. The rail forms a terrific leading line. Leading lines take the eye and give them a track to follow to the point of interest in the image. In this case, we take it that the open door is that focus. That was reinforced by one of the commenters saying it looked ominous - so it worked.

What does look lazy is that the verticals are all falling over. The inside of the rail is vertical, but that's not one of the elements that should be. Use walls or doors with your photo software grid display to rotate the image and get it looking right. If voters think you're lazy and don't care about details, they'll really hammer you hard.

Subject:
It's on challlenge and actually nicely industrial in look. The open door at the top of the stairs is tantalising because there's probably a story behind it. The whole idea of an attractive image is to tell a story above and beyond the title. I think you've started to do this ahead of an awful lot of entries. No, the voters didn't "get it" because it didn't vote well, but I don't believe that is a fault of the subject. If you want to try something like this in the future, think to yourself "what is the story I want to tell, what are the questions I want the viewer to be asking about what's happening here?". You might find then that a small prop helps the story.

Technical (Colour and light):
This is where you lost your voters. The light and colour are appropriate to industrial but perhaps they lack a wow factor or any implied drama. Sometimes all you need to do is ask yourself what everyone else would do with this shot ... and then go and do something completely different.

The noise, you got hammered with the noise. This is where we need your photographer's comments. If it was deliberate because you wanted a grungy, ominous look then we would discuss how to get that accepted and understood. If it was an accident, then we could discuss how to avoid it next time.

Summary:
This image was a good idea with some fine elements which just needed tweaking with quality and details to make it work.

Brett

explosive
by visaksen

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
I'm sorry, but without any input from you in technical details or comments, it's just not possible to critique this image.

When we do a critique, we go past just the photographic result, that's what voters comments do. The critique looks at what you were trying to achieve, how you wanted it to look and what issues you had in getting the image captured and ready for voting.

Brett

The Backfire Of Living In Paradise
by aledfc

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
Ok, so it bombed at the box office. The voter/commenters didn't have the benefit of your comments so lets look at it in some depth and see where that leads us.

First Impression - the most important one:
Not unlike your commenters, the haze is a great dissapointment to seeing what this image is about. I read the title and didn't connect it with the challenge. So I guess the initial reaction of confusion or conflicting signals causes people to quickly hit a low number and move on. Let's see if we can fix that.

Composition:
Reading your comments, I really think this was a valid idea. What you were intending to convey was the human downside of industrial expansionism. I don't know what you cropped out of the bottom part of the frame but it has left your Point of Interest (the housing) teetering on the edge of the frame about to fall off.

Perhaps the foreground is not hazy. That would be a plus. The contrast between clear and haze would show pollution. As it is, the haze looks like an over-exposure and a mistake.

Also, by leaving in some of the foreground, the housing development moves up onto a thirds line which puts it right where the eye naturally goes. Even better because you are on a hill and there are houses all down in front of you. They would add a sense of scale and perspective.

Subject:
I think you could have made your point using the title. Somwething like "Backfire of Industrial Development" would convey your message. It would also tell the viewer that the hazy, messy image was deliberate, that you don't like it and that this is your protest.

Technical (Colour and light):
There's nothing you can do about the haze so as we've discussed above, turn it into a deliberate feature and it would work for you rather than against you.

Summary:
You had a really good idea here. It didn't come off but the margin between success and failure is sometimes quite small. Don't be defensive and attack the idea with gusto, confidence and committment will show in your image.

By the way, I really admired your Shutter Speed entry. That was a gutsy and difficult task. With that kind of imagination and tenacity, you're going to get a hit oneday.

This was fun, thanks for the opportunity

Brett

collecting dots
by Pipon13

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
Great fun to do a critique on your image but it is dificult if you don't give us any information in your photographers comments. When we do a critique, we go past just the photographic result, that's what voters comments do. The critique looks at what you were trying to achieve, how you wanted it to look and what issues you had in getting the image captured and ready for voting.

First Impression - the most important one:
Bright and colourful, but what is it about?

Composition:
The positioning of the bug is perfect, nicely on thirds and facing into centre of frame.

Subject:
The title you've given it probably makes it less on-challenge than the image. "Collecting dots" suggests the action of collection, but that's not what's happening in the image - so we get a little confused. Sure, the bug has a collection of dots, you could play on that. It's not a huge attachement to the challenge but it hangs in there :)

Technical (Colour and light):
The red on pink really works here being complimentary and very striking. The light's good too being even across the image and without any shadow. As with all macro work, DOF can be your enemey. It could have been a little sharper, very close to working.

Summary:
It's a cool image but I suspect what failed to light up the voters is in not getting an understanding if what it's all about. Bugs in macro are a tough task as they move out of focus so easily. To get this close and this close to sharp was good work. Am very much looking forward to your next work

Brett

still life with two heads
by powkang

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
Grace, welcome to DPC and the Critique Club. This is very cool to be asked to critique a first ever entry.

First Impression - the most important one:
There is something alluring about low-light shots like this, they require the viewer to explore the image and engage with it, to peer into the shadows and corners for the story it's telling. On the other hand, make it too hard to see and they will not bother, vote negatively and just pass on.

Composition:
The image is too small and that makes it hard for people to study the detail. I've discussed that further down. Have you cropped this at all since it's still in the 1.333 camera ratio? It doesn't look like it, You can change a lot about the way your image looks by doing that and you don't need expensive photo editing software either.

Composition is about leading the eye into an image (painting or photo). Research shows that the eye enters bottom left and travels up to top right ("Leading Lines Rule"). Once in there, the same research tells us that the eye finds comfort when the point of interest (POI) sits on a thirds line or intersection ("the Rule of Thirds").

In this picture, it's a little difficult to determine what is the main point of interest. The light on the wall is strong and its reflections are tantalising so what we need to do is then get them assembled in frame so that the eye is drawn to them.

A good place to start is in cropping the image to loose any dead space which doesn't add to the photo. Don't be confused by this, but we occasionally suggest that people should have added dead or "neutral" space in an image to give the single simple object a powerful focus. In this case, there is a lot of dead space in the bottom left area which overpowers the image so we can crop that out. I've done an example to show what I mean
(click to enlarge)
Here the image has been cropped to loose the dead space bottom and left while still retaining the flower and its vase. It's OK, but you can see how it does't 'look' right yet. Apart from balance, the wall socket and the flower are distracting. The flower was a great idea but it's just too under-exposed so be brutal with a precious bit if loosing it improves the overall result.

It needs an application of the rule of thirds and some further cropping.
(click to enlarge)
Not perfect, but I hope you can see how you can use these tools and rules to dramatically enhance your camera captures.

Subject:
While I really like the elements you've introduced into your image, I really can't get "industrial" about it and your commenters were also of the same view. So let's ignore that and work on the image as a stand-alone photo. I just think this has potential and would like to see you re-set it and reshoot it with work on some of the things we've talked about here and post it in your portfolio for comment.

Technical (Colour and light):
Size:- Your reduction for DPC is too small to do your entry justice. It's currently 425x319 when it could have been 640x480. The maximum size on any dimension is 640 so make the most of it.

Sharpness:- The smaller the image after reduction, the more sharpness you loose. All camera-sharp images that are reduced to 640x480 require sharpening after reduction, it's just a function of the resizing that it will get fuzzy.

Focus:- It's difficult to be sure, but I am pretty sure that the original will not be sharp and in focus. That's pretty much an essential in this forum, you will just get hammered for being 'lazy' every time in the voting.

Alignment:- Your camera is tilted and so the sideboard is not level. That will loose you points so see if you can get some freeware at least that allows you to rotate by small increments. In this case a right hand rotate of 0.8deg makes all the difference.

Summary:
This is a very creative approach to a first submission. It shows you as a photographer who wants to work and paint with light. That might seem obvious to you, but it puts you in the top 20% at least of submitters to DPC. Using light in this way is advanced work and so I encourage you to work with it, experiment, worry it to death, be anal about the small details and dazzle us in the future with a ribbon.

Brett

My rock collection
by hannafate

Comment:
::: Critique Club :::
Great fun to do a critique on your image but it is dificult if you don't give us any information in your photographers comments. When we do a critique, we go past just the photographic result, that's what voters comments do. The critique looks at what you were trying to achieve, how you wanted it to look and what issues you had in getting the image captured and ready for voting.

First Impression - the most important one:
A blast of colour, light and shapes. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at, but studying it got me there.

Composition:
Composition is about leading the eye into an image (painting or photo), research shows that the eye enters bottom left and travels up to top right. Once in there, the same research tells us that the eye finds comfort in the point of interest (POI) that sits on a thirds line or intersection.

Your rocks are a little haphazard and so they confuse the eye. It doesn't know where to begin and can't find the main POI to settle on. Since we're basically lazy creatures we then don't make any further effort to decipher what we're seeing. This means the viewer disconnects from the image instead of engaging with it.

Subject:
The rocks have the most amazing structures, textures and form. They are a perfect subject to photograph as they are translucent and allow light into them and through them to explore their beuty and flaws.

Technical (Colour and light):
Light through stones, especially through the side or back just ignites their textures and mystical qualities. The truism of this is that we almost always hold them up to the light to look at them. By contrast the light in the image is more front-on which has flattened those beautiful structures and that's a shame.

With colour, the stones themselves have so much to offer. The red carpet has really sucked up all the light and colour and taken it away from the rocks - which is a pity. Look how diamonds are displayed on black velvet to bring out their colour and depth. Your collection would benefit from that too. It would make them glow and sparkle, the colour would radiate.

Summary:
The collection is lovely and the possibilities only need a little tweaking technically to really show them off to their best.

If you'd like to chat further via PM on any of the technicalities, please do.

Brett