Clive
by cpanaioti

Comment:
the oof shapes of the horses and trees are really lovely. we see just enough of the foreground horse to identify with him, to wonder if everything else is just taking place in his mind. perhaps those fuzzy shapes behind him are memories...

LIGHT 1.jpg
by mia67

Comment:
it's a pleasing and competent composition, the dof adds interest. but nothing takes this beyond being a picture of candles. scorewise that creates a ceiling of 6 for me. I need to feel stories in the shadows! I must hear secrets in the light!

Gothic, take two
by Melethia

Comment:
hell yeah! this will score at least a full point lower than your original, maybe two!

but I love it.

(I might have cropped off another inch, though... oh, I am bad...)

Cathedral
by Melethia

Comment:
All gothic cathedrals look the same from this angle. For me, all your crazy processing was the key to getting something memorable from this shot. You've made it... well... more gothic. It also reminds me of German silents, Fritz Lang with far more detail.

The only thing is that eventually I notice the man on the bottom and I realize you're trying to feature him in some way. For me, the competition between man and cathedral cancel each other out.

I can't help but notice that if I "crop" off the top (by scrolling down) to be approximately square, the man becomes the focal point and the picture is just astounding and strange and unique. My kind of picture!

_-
by bucket

Comment:
wth? why are you not sending me this photo?

Monochromatic
by Wildcard

Comment:
I need to write an essay about why I like abstracts. I think this is lovely. A diagonal pulsing rhythm of lines and water in the background counterpoint the steady beat of vertical lines in the foreground. Colors are very subjective (to monitors as well as eyes!), but I love these pink to red to purple shades. I also love how the falling water is also catching light and creating shapes of light. This is hang-upable.

Swinging 4
by timfythetoo

Comment:
wow wow wow!! every see Francis Bacon paintings? xianart's photos often remind me of Francis Bacon. The distortion of motion has ironically created a very still, sad face, as though it were a ghost hiding in your photo rather than the face of your subject. It seems too big (and too old) to be the face of your subject. So, when first approaching this photo it seems like another happy playful motion shot, but then you are struck with that face, giving it much more impact than it would have otherwise. The composition also helps to temporarily hide the face but then inexorably draw the eye to it. Fantastic.

Jeff Gordon Pit Stop Dover DE.
by MPRPRO

Comment:
my first reaction is amusement. everyone is so busy and efficient, yet they are dressed in these ridiculous cartoony colors. these same garish colors keep any composition from asserting itself. the diagonals you've created, the energy that might have been gained from cropping off the front of the car, all has been lost in the deafening cacophony of color.

In Honor of the Veterans
by MPRPRO

Comment:
The flag seems like a belch in the great, gaping mouth of this bridge. The selective desaturation contributes to this effect. The suspension cables create an exaggerated perspective, making it seem like the flag is issuing out from some deep central place within the bridge.

Displays like this remind me of Imperial Rome in its decline, when the excess of emperors seemed like a sign of insecurity, their insistence they were gods seemed like an overcompensation. I can almost already see this bridge as a large, impressive ruin for future tourists to marvel over.

Shower
by Jedusi

Comment:
It is so hard to get a good picture of rain. agenkin has done it well. He captures the motion of rain, the energy of it. You have captured the feeling of rain, a texture of rain, as though rain were something unmoving in the air that we could touch. Everything in your photo is profoundly affected by this rain. Your son is under a tree because of it. The tree is heavy with it. Your dog defies the rain, and as such is almost banned from the photo. Notice that his form is balanced by a heavier presence of branches in the opposite corner. It is a perfectly balanced photo, which is rare in a photo so wide. The forms of son and tree curving against each other, the way the son's vertical is extended by some sort of branch in the foreground, this is perfectly composed the way a painting would be. But it is too momentary for a painting, and few painters would dare to paint only half a dog. No, this is pure photography. It is not painting, it is not reality, it is an impossibility: instead of water taking the shape of its container, the container takes the shape of water.