A Long Day
by Phocal

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Lovin the details of the board's graphics, the slump of his body, his tats, hair and the sheer exhaustion on his face say it all. I think you could have cropped out or even better, cloned over the border of green at the top, it does nothing for the shot but draw the eye there, and nothing's happening. Would have helped to fix that skew of the horizon, too. Finally if you had just tracked him for another second or so, pretty sure that board would have lowered at some point and then we could have seen his full profile. Here, he's partly hidden by the board and it just doesn't work :-/

Hope this has been helpful, feel free to PM me

Susan

Time To Get My Hands Dirty
by BEL_Clark

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I can see that you put some thought into the composition of the tools here, the angle of the lopping shears helps lead the eye through the planting pots to the gloves. I think more dof would have helped so the strident colour of the out-of-focus shears wouldn't compete so much with the much more detailed and in-focus, but subdued in colour, gloves. They're fighting each other and I suspect that is why this placed where it did.

Personally I think that the vibrant purples in the foreground overwhelm the subdued red handle of another tool in the background. Lighting looks to be ambient, my one main issue is that there seems to be a heavy hit with the saturation slider to make those shear handles pop. If so it may have been better to go the other way and fade them out slightly to match the gloves a bit more.

Hope this has been of help, feel free to PM me with any questions.

Susan

Casting
by Ja-9

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Nice atmosphere here, love the curves of the fly fisherman's line. Obviously working with ambient light though personally I think your ISO a little high, shutter could probably have been slowed a little.

I'm guessing you snuck up on this guy unawares, going by his back being to you and the focus on his line. I think too that you shot from what I call 'regular person pov' - meaning just standing in place and shooting a subject. If you had been shooting from a lower pov then you may have been closer to his level and given it a more personal feel.

Technicals are ok but my big bugaboo here are all the trees. I can see that you're using them to frame him - but it's almost too much. The pic looks busy and with the oof foreground competing with the deadfall to the right, I find myself worrying more about what he's going to catch his line on, than him! A little zooming in might have been the best way to go here.

Hope this has been of help, feel free to PM me

Susan

Canalside
by Pangurban

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Very nice setting, great time of day to shoot, and as noted, very dfreamy. Problem is, there is nothing happening. There is no true focal point. I looked everywhere for that one thing to rivet my attention and didn't find it. Pathway, river, trees, setting sun...that's it. It's like looking at a set before the extras and talent are called on. Even just a pedestrian or dogwalker on the path would have broken the vista and given us something to look at. If you had a tripod with you, you could set it up, put on the timer and use yourself as a model.

Otherwise, I see it's a kit lens that caught this image. I think you could have slowed the shutter speed down quite a lot (leaning against a tree to stabilize yourself, you should be able to get a fairly sharp image at 1/40) and thus bought yourself some more dof.

Hope this has been of help, feel free to PM me with any questions.

Susan

Hello
by Phocal

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Great capture of an animal in its own environment - I could tell from the first glance that this was no zoo shot. Love the focus on the head, can just imagine how you felt when you met it. The sinuous body, the duckweed on the surface of the water, the natural lighting, good comp, though maybe a little more dof would be good. Shooting wide-open is pretty dicey esp with such a shallow dof.

But DANG! That branch! That is definitely a big part of what killed your score imnsho. As already noted, it decapitates the snake and thus robs it of some of its power. That, coupled with the DPC voter fraidy cat voting when it comes to creepy-crawlies and not kutesy kritters or majestic felines/raptors etc....*sigh*

Still, a very good image. Maybe just a little more pp contrast would have helped, but cloning out all of that twig would have been a major pain in the butt.

Susan

Patience
by clickodak

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

This is a very good image, your voting histo reflects that. I'm also a fan of backlighting and the colours are great and autumnal. The pic isn't heavily processed, which always wins brownie points from me. Composition is straightforward and not too tightly cropped.

Only problem is, even the very best pic of a subject most people don't care for so much, so up close, is a very tough sell here. Cutesy critters like puppies and kittens? Yes. A dramatically coloured macaw or a tiger swimming after a chunk of meat tossed in water? Oh yes. But reptiles, insects and arachnids rarely do well.

However, had I voted I would have given it a 6, and that's because the top shadowed part of the abdomen looks to be out of focus. Had it been in focus - and maybe just going to f7.1 or f.8 would have done it, especially as you were at an ISO of 400, so had lots of light to play with. And as spider's not moving you could have slowed the shutter down a bit if you wanted to cheat in a little more light.

Hope this has been helpful, feel free to PM me

Susan

Big Red
by Dr.Confuser

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I can see, as I trust the voters can, that you shot this at a 3/4 angle to the bus. Thus the angles are kind of all over the place; I find that DPC voters tend to not like off-kilter horizons, and here I am looking for a horizon to stabilize myself, as it were, but can see none. I thought it might have been shot with a wide angle lens initially due to the almost cartoony distortion of the front of the bus in particular. I know I find the apparent downward tilt of the front of the bus - I know, it's perspective - but it seems to give the photo a top-heavy quality to the right of the pic.

As for the PS tricks, I actually don't mind them here. I don't think it's overprocessed, but seeing that you shot at ISO 1600 and image noise always seems to Nikon's main bugaboo, I can see some noise; otherwise I have no problems with slow shutter speeds to create ghost trails behind moving subjects.

Hope this has been helpful and feel free to PM me with any questions.

Susan

• r a d i a n c e •
by Ja-9

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

*thinking to self* Hmm, you came 6th out of 122 in a Free Study with this image, and you want a critique? Why do I always get the impossible ones....*sigh* Oops, pardon my out-loud thought processes!

Nice classic macro, and I can see why some mention seeing it almost move...I'm getting a little dizzy too, which isn't such a bad thing ;-) A little blown out in the swirly middle petals, but not hideously so. I really the gradation of the warmth of the outermost petals to the cooler tones.

All in all a pleasing image to look at and now I will PM you asking how to do focus stacking in PS!

Susan

First Snow
by treyvus

Comment:
Lovely shot, is this really Banff?! Wow...crazy weather in Alberta. Love the reflections especially.

Golden days
by vikas

Comment:
Grats on the blue and what a gorgeous shot! Was this taken in the Adirondacks?