Baby Bananas
by UrfaK

Comment:
this is just so very pretty. 7

Boo!
by Sebi

Comment:
great expression! what a bizarre and funny picture. 8

The Last One in is a Rotten Egg!
by MelonMusketeer

Comment:
I like the transitio from stationary to moving. 7

Chinatown Orange
by Wink

Comment:
I like this sort of forced attention in the midst of chaos. 8

The Touching Orange Sun
by HighNooner

Comment:
fun, funky picture. much enjoyed. 8

Thambili
by aznym

Comment:
the color seems a little oversaturated but a great candid capture here. The girl looking up from the fruit is priceless. 7

Apple
by Hauxon

Comment:
Excellent recreation of some sort of old time photographical illustration. 9

Chinatown Cabbage
by DeniseL

Comment:
This is just brilliant. The man disappears into the background, holding his head in his hand. 10

Grown old, all alone. At least she still has her teeth....
by maxaz1

Comment:
hello Maxine, I just wrote you a really long Critique Club critique and then managed to lose the entire thing.

well, let's look on the bright side. I'm sure I was being overly verbose, and I will be ever so much more efficient now.

First off, I gave you a 5. You met the challenge, because I see a face in the headlights and grill, but I didn't have a reason to go higher really. For one thing, headlights and grill isn't a terribly original idea and I prize originality. But it's not just that. This particular headlights-and-grill doesn't pop out at me as being especially face-like or having much personality. Let's try to analyze why:

1) the angle. it's not dead-on, and without the symmetry the headlights look less like eyes and more like... headlights.

2) the lighting. this is flash lighting. there is no other lighting. so the light is dead-on with no shadows, and harsh, and the background is invisible, except for the grass beneath, which is distracting from the "face".

suggestions: try different kinds of lighting. you'll find or can start all kinds of discussions on this topic here. You can "paint with light" by using a long exposure (aperture f8 or a little wider), a tripod and a flashlight. Or you can set up some strong lights on the car. Or you can shoot in daylight, but then you have to worry about the background.

The lighting is the most important issue here, imho.

Your humble Critique Club servant,

Don

Paper quickly realizes his defeat over Rock is short lived
by navyasw02

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

As you know, I enjoyed this entry during the challenge. But I suppose it's my duty now to speculate why this didn't score higher with the general public (though it didn't score badly by any means). I have a feeling the 4 and under votes were for DNMC. I know it's not fair, but this is the sort of challenge where different people have different expectations, and it is impossible to please them all. Since you were trying to simulate human feeling instead of human form, you risked some people missing the connection, and I think that's what happened. But that was their shortcoming, not yours.

Also, your scissors are completely black, probably a cut-out rather than actual scissors. DPCers like to see details, and if they are looking at a picture of scissors they want it to really look like scissors! They want to feel like they can reach into the monitor and grab those scissors. Why they want such a thing, I have no idea. But that does seem to be the dominant esthetic here.

Now, let's talk about what you gain by having black scissors. They give you a dark, ominous shape, which adds to the mood of the picture. And since it's the mood that creates personification, this is very important! It also adds a sense of the theatrical. In other words, this is a staged shot, we all know it's staged and we're enjoying that. Kind of like being at a circus instead of a realistic play. If you look at a lot of Man Ray's studio photos, you'll sense the same thing: he is glorying in the illusion instead of trying to hide it.

And while we're talking about studios, you take full advantage of yours by creating as simple a set up as possible without the cop-out of having no background at all. You create a corner. What more direct way of creating the feeling of being cornered? You also create dark, dramatic shadows that add to the mood. These same shadows are not popular at DPC. They like to see detail in shadowed areas. Again, this is an arbitrary desire and I don't recommend that you cater to it. You are on the right path here, making all technical decisions in support of what this particular photo is trying to achieve. The kudos from your commentors should be evidence of your success.