Sitting on the Path
by escapetooz

Comment:
The first thing that strikes me is the crop. Unlike a standard portrait, she is not surrounded by her environment. In fact, she only allows environment on one side of her, and since she is facing away from that side, it seems behind her. Her "front", her "direction" goes off to our right. but she looks back towards us, so we are not quite in front of her, we're off a little to her right. I basically feel like a minor distraction in her life. She is on her path, firmly so. She controls her life just like she dominates the composition. Even her head is cropped. This is highly subjective, but another effect of this extreme crop is that the background seems to be emanating from her. I imagine it's her memory, which she is about to put behind her for good. Just look how much you would have lost by cropping this more conventionally!

west coast fog
by jdannels

Comment:
If one were to describe this photo, he would call it "the sun in cloudy sky over a mountainous shore" and maybe he would mention the fence. I think what provides your drama here is that the "major elements" are so small: the sun is tiny, the shoreline is tucked into the bottom corner and silhouetted, the sea is just a shimmering snake of highlights on the bottom of the photo. The vast majority of the photo is devoted to sunlight streaming through a cloudscape. For me, it is a suggestion of how small we are, how small our concerns are, and that there is something vast all around us. This vastness in your photo is rather comforting: it is soft and infused with light. Your fence further enhances this idea: it reminds me of how my "self" is my boundary, and that it is so small compared to the world beyond it. Those fenceposts look a little like a city skyline, and further reminds me that no matter how big I draw my boundary, there is something bigger waiting beyond. oh... and to get back to the sun, that represents our dreams, our fears, our notions about what exists outside of us... and even that is small, even that is surrounded.

Day 3 : Hershey Atoms
by ShaneBlake

Comment:
crumbs are often unattractive. they create an impulse to clean them up. One doesn't want to gaze at them. That being said, I do like the rich colors here, plus I do get an almost poignant sense of brokenness. but to be honest nothing that holds my interest for very long.

Venetian Doorway
by tryals15

Comment:
This is my kind of photo! I enjoy being able to see something completely abstract simultaneously with what is being represented. Here, all the details seem geometrical: the windows, doors, bridge(?), and then on a finer level, the wooden planks, the bricks, the railing, and even the more ornate elements like the sill flowers and whatever that fencing is below it. All of it is geometrical (the flowers, for instance, are in a perfectly straight line at the bottom of the window). I like the tilt because most of the shapes here are on a straight vertical/horizontal, so by tilting you allow us to see more things. I feel like I'm tilting my head to see something more closely, the way people do. You have just the right amount of contrast to make details prominent without burning them right out. I think voters would accuse you of not being focused enough, but I like the soft focus, it's important to the texture of this piece, and allows some warmth into your geometry.

almost action
by raish

Comment:
gorgeous sensuous picture. I'm falling asleep just looking at it!

5
by JPR

Comment:
This is a fun shot. I like all the jagged shapes that seem to be rushing off into the distance along the lines of perspective. This is a great Cubist work.

Unexpected Answers
by JPR

Comment:
I think your title is refering to the question mark formed by the string. It is what I would call an "S curve" which is the standard of beauty in the world of lines. This is a lovely warped S of a line, echoed by its shadow, divided by the background and fading into nothingness the way a pen and ink line often does: lines need to vary in width and texture to carry impact. But all this is a feint to hide the secret subject. Finding that secret subject is a great joy, regardless of how mundane it is. Bravo.

Horizons
by Imagineer

Comment:
One thing that's great about this is that I can't figure out how the hell you did it. It looks like I'm looking at sea and sky, but that can't be because of the reflection on the bottom. The picture must be "upside-down," which means that the top is actually coming toward me instead of going away from me... but it quite simply doesn't look like that. I suppose my "horizon" is simply the leading edge of a puddle, but you have processed it into a landscape. I try to be judicious with adding new favorites because I have so many, and therefore my new rule is not to add a favorite simply because I love a picture. It must do something I have never seen before, or it must perfectly epitomize what I would like to do with photography. This is both.

The Birds! The Birds!
by e301

Comment:
I have a wonderful book called "Understanding Exposure" which gave me a great overview of what can be achieved with different apertures and different shutter speeds. On the cover is a photo of flying pigeons. Their wings are a blur as they surround a little boy. They are pure motion, pure energy. Clearly, a slower shutter speed was used. This allowed for a smaller aperture and thus plenty of depth of field. Therefore, the birds standing in front of the boy are as perfectly focused as the bird standing on his shoulder.

You, on the other hand, have frozen the birds completely. You have stolen their energy and forced us to meditate upon them, to ponder the miracle of flight. In this way, the photograph is like a prayer. And despite your relatively large aperture, plenty of these birds are in tack-sharp focus, though the buildings are in a lovely state of fuzz. I chalk that up to your skill as a photographer. It's all part of your role as Mr. Freeze. It's all part of your role as prophet.

Two great photographs. One is a photograph of a boy. Yours is a photograph of birds.

And btw, it doesn't scare me. Not at all. But I see very well that some would be afraid. People are often afraid of prophets.

To be or not to be ....
by Milacroft

Comment:
I think a side-angle would have conveyed your joke better. But I'll give you a 7 just for thinking of this.