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meneleComment: greetings from the Critique Club
I like this photo. I gave it a 6. I save 7s and higher for photos that wow me, and it's remarkable how many of them do. For me, a 6 is still a good score. You interpreted the challenge figuratively and gave your shot not just dark tones, but a dark mood. In fact, the more I look at it, the more I think I should have given this a 7. It's got great texture on the hand and a real weighty mood to it. I like how the fingers just disappear into shadow.
And I can almost guarantee you that all the things I like about it are the things that the DPC voters did NOT like about it. They do NOT like creative interpretations of a challenge and they do NOT like mysterious moods. The people who took time to comment looked at your picture more carefully and thoughtfully, and scored you higher. In fact, you should be proud that you broke 5 with such an interesting photo.
I see two general strategies that you could take from this point.
Strategy 1: Pander. Make your shots less and less interesting as you follow a narrow set of "rules" designed to appeal to the most voters. I believe
scalvert has a tutorial on getting high scores where he goes over some of these. Eventually, all of your spirit will be condensed into a slight "quirk" or "style" that identifies your photos without actually making them original.
Strategy 2: Blossom. Keep going after the images that interest you. Move even further from the DPC standard. Sometimes you'll get sub-5 scores, but there's also a possibility that after a while DPC will come around. They will move toward you instead of you moving toward them. This is happening to
silverfoxx. You will find her with a ribbon soon. The ultimate hero of this method is
jjbeguin, who has a whole column of ribbons. There are also
e301,
bucket,
xion... find your own heroes, the ones who are devoted only to creating wonder with their cameras. They are here.
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