Ballerina
by Ecce_Signum

Comment:
Lovely for an accidental ballerina! Congrats on the (appropiately) blue :-)

Far away from home
by HalldorIngi

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

OK, that does it. I'm moving to Iceland ;-)

Just another absolutely lovely Icelandic scene...can't believe that's a moonrise we're seeing but as noted already, traces of the aurora borealis are there, and I'm pretty sure a sunrise would take those out in a hurry. Gorgeous cold tones, I can feel the snow from the leading line trail around my legs from the knees down. Your companion's dark outfit makes a perfect counterpoint for the shot and contrasts well. Can't find anything to nitpick.

And you got an HM out of it, never anything to sneeze at in a FS. Fantastic work, look forward to seeing more!

Susan

Wizard
by Phocal

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Always a pleasure to critique an image of a subject I know well and see often. Lovely colours, great comp, the lighting is gorgeous and for a perched shot, still very dramatic and full of energy - the raindrops do a great job of making it clear what the weather was like and why the redtail has chosen to sit and wait out the rain. Great location too, a fencepost....and you got this with a 150mm. Fantastic work. Can't really find any fault! And I bet if you'd been able to get them coming in to land with that level of sharpness and clarity, that you would have been in the top 3.

Very well done, keep up the good work :-)

Susan

The Lover
by MEJazz

Comment:
Mostly, the pic is ok in terms of comp; the lighting's ok but the petals on the daisies are blown out. And everything is very soft. A hazard to shooting handheld macros, bees don't hold still and other factors like wind etc don't help. And sadly this isn't a unique shot; macros of bees are a dime a dozen, so to do well with a shot of one means it has to be tacksharp at the very least.

The rules don't change for FS, though it seems that way at times. Generally it's much harder to do well in FS because everyone else is trotting out the very best image they took during the course of the whole month, so you can have a somewhat daunting array of subjects to compete against.

Message edited by author 2015-12-08 07:41:13.

Desperate Househusband
by the_rkp

Comment:
Must've been some party, I'm getting tipsy just looking at this. And you're soooo cute in that apron :-)

the house
by Abra

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Not bad considering it looks to have been shot around midday (going by the backview of the whited-out curve of the Opera House) but it looks too much like a typical snapshot - hastily shot without much thought going into the composition. Personally I'm not fond of the overly tight crop at the top of the Opera House, hence the 5 I gave in voting. I think that with the Opera House seen pretty much in profile, and the ersatz photog seen at a 3/4 overhead, and that vast expanse of water, that there is a lack of connection between the two.

Still, not a bad attempt and you still did include a phone in the shot, so at least you didn't get DNMC'd ;-)

Susan

iBeauty
by jerowe

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Fun entry, I gave this a 6 in voting, mostly cause I liked how well the phone was hidden and the oof dogs' reflections.

I think there are two main reasons why this didn't do better. One, there is a lot going on in this pic; so much visual clutter, so much stuff that just doesn't need to be there. Yes I know you want the cluttered vanity there to confuse the viewer, and I love the use of the three-way mirror reflecting the dogs.

But the stacking cases on the left, the edge of the towel rack on the right, they do nothing for the shot except take up valuable space. In a shot like this, you really need to have a definite reason for everything being there.

Second reason: there isn't a level horizon in this image. And there must be one; most voters hate a horizon that isn't level. Levelling the image on the base of the mirror frame would have done the job nicely as so many items on the vanity are at an angle themselves, like the bright yellow iron. Again, there is a time and a place for Dutch angles, but a busy shot ain't one of them!

Hope this has been useful.

Susan

The look
by docjonny

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Kudos on the HM, very well done and I can see why. Awfully brave to shoot at 1/3 and 1600 ISO...but it worked beautifully as I am guessing that any flash would have bleached out the faces in the prints something awful! I find it fascinating that only two of the crowd of young ladies here are paying any kind of attention at all to the actual prints...as noted already, it looks like some are taking selfies with the prints instead.

The comp is simple and does a fantastic job of leading you down the row of beautifully shot images of gorgeous women carefully styled and posed. The lightness of the prints draws even greater contrast to the pure black and the muddle of shadowy ladies who seem to be more absorbed in themselves. Wonderful strong statement, and I love the slight blur of the foreground girl leaning forward for a better look at what's behind her.

Overall very nicely down, and congrats on the HM! Feel free to pm me with any questions.

Susan

_MG_3172-Edit-2
by tylerichert

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

First things first. PLEASE give your images a title. A file name is NOT a title, and does nothing at all for the image. Hell, even the word 'Untitled' is better than NO title at all. Capiche? If you need help seeing where to fill in the space for a title please PM me.

Now. Nice bright poppy colours without going overboard, as can be easy to do. I like the lowering of the sun here, all the hotspots are from headlights and you can't really burn those down without it looking fake. I like the guy in the crosswalk watching that the traffic has indeed stopped. I love wide-angle lenses cause they provide great front-to-back focus and still catch details like the girl cyclist with items in her handlebar-mounted basket, the license plates etc.

There is only one drawback to street shooting and that is the busyness and proliferation of eye-catching colours...they do their job too well which is why most photogs prefer to desat street images, to bring more attention to line and form.

Hope this critique has been helpful. Now promise me one thing: NO MORE file names in the title field. Got it? Thanks!

Spartacus of Sequim (pronunced SKWIM)
by HUETH

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Love the dog's expression and demeanor, glad to see you listed why you chose to desat the image. Not too crazy about the bleached-out white parts of the dog; being able to master control of those whites is a big part of doing well here. I believe Tiberius' image of Snowy came in second. Snowy is a pure white cat but Tiberius consistently manages to light Snowy subtly enough that he gets all those wonderful soft gray tones in that white fur.

What perplexes me is the noise in the bg. Then I saw your settings. I feel that the very, very slow shutter speed you used - 1/8th is just too slow to capture anything with a pulse (see the slight blur in the left ear?) - along with the fairly high ISO caused you the most in terms of problems here. It would have been better to go with a faster shutter speed to capture movement (at least 1/100th) and, assuming you don't have a real flash yet, use the pop-up flash with just something as simple as a layer of bubblewrap taped onto the surface and an angled aluminum pie plate as a reflector to light from overhead.

Hope this all makes sense, feel free to pm me with any questions

Susan