Road traveled
by clickodak

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Hi Marcel, this was a lucky little surprise to find amongst all those flowers you had to choose from :-) I too see and love the tongue-like aspect of the petal, and the tininess of the slug - this did very well considering that it's a slug and not something cute like a butterfly. The shallow dof works very well and all your settings look fine to me. Two small changes I might suggest is perhaps stopping up to f3.2 or f.4, as usually lenses aren't at their sharpest wide open, and as this was a Minimal challenge (and cropping ain't allowed) just doing more to fill the frame with the petal. The left half, though it does help draw the eye to the petal and slug, is a black void just sitting there twiddling its thumbs so it may as well be put to good use!

Overall a very good and charming image, and belated congrats on the top ten! Keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing more from you in the future :-)

Susan

Airplane Approach
by clickodak

Comment:
Hi Marcel, congrats on the HM, and thanks so much for the tribute! Glad I was able to inspire you :-)

The eyes are the mirror of the soul!
by coovt2001

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

A very interesting b/w study of someone with quite a story to tell. The challenge in those eyes just dares you to ask questions, doesn't it? He is slightly off-centre so that adds to the slightly unsettling air he projects. The detail and texture are very well shown and it looks like ambient light, of which I am a huge fan. Settings look spot on to this Nikon user. And traditionally portraits don't do very well in Free Study but here you are within a hair's breadth of the top 10.

Overall a great shot and very well captured. Please continue to shoot and enter and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Susan

My Life story
by riksnake

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club! I love having a subject like this gentleman here. The colours, textures and tones are great, the composition simple and manages to avoid dead-centredness by the slight angulation of his head away from you.

Now for the nitpicky part. Shallow dof works great for macros and some subjects, and can work well portraits...but I'm afraid the fact that his eyebrows and the tip of his nose is so out of focus that is detracts greatly from the overall image. Ditto the more slightly oof right eye. Most lenses aren't at their best wide-open and I think that a few more stops down would give us all that lovely detail only hinted at here. Your settings confuse me a bit...why such a high ISO and fast shutter speed? Surely you could have got away with an ISO of 320-400 and a shutter speed of 1/100. That would have allowed you to shoot at f.4 or more.

Otherwise, a lovely image with tons of potential. Please keep shooting and entering and feel free to PM me with any questions.

ETA: Might I suggest that, as this is a Free Study entry, that you take a good look at the 12th place image in this challenge and in particular a good look at the settings used!

Susan

Message edited by author 2017-07-10 15:20:47.

Mim's Kitchen
by Cyrilda

Comment:
Wow, a kitchen even smaller than mine :-) very cute and cosy!

Masters of wisdom
by Srikanthgumma

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

It's always hard to critique an image that has won a ribbon or finished within a cat's whisker of one. This is one of those images. Fantastic ambient lighting, the models are well chosen and posed, there is a ton of texture and a definite sense of story here, which is so important in portraits. Interesting choice of lens and settings, but it clearly worked! And you want me to tell you how to go to the next level.

Hmm....well there is that tilt to the table, and once seen, I find that it does just throw the balance of this image off just enough to be off-putting. And chopping off the top of the head of the youngest member of the trio is a big no-no in my book. Strictly fwiw the first thing I do with any image is check that the horizon is level, and level it if it needs it. And with portraits it seems to always be a good idea to shoot a bit wide around them (so your subject could *move* without being butted up too close to the edge of the pic.

Definitely you have an eye and a great sense for what makes a good shot, please keep up the good work and continue to enter! And congrats on the HM. In a Free Study, no less.

Susan

Sunset Beams
by Drake

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

This is a pleasant sunset image, with nice lighting and adequate composition with the sky dominating. But the main reason it did so poorly, imnsho, is a) it's entered in a Free Study and everyone is trotting out their best pic, so the competition is much tougher than usual and this image is quite blah. We've all seen pics like this many, many, many times before, so there is nothing new here to see; and b) there is no focal point. There is no ship or any other item of interest on the horizon to help draw the sky and sea together. Well, yes there is the light...but there needs to be more. If you are a serious seascape person, check out the work of Cuttooth and see what you can learn.

Overall an ok effort, but there needs to be a whole lot more before you can wow the crowd here. Trust me, I know from experience how hard it is! Please continue to shoot and enter and I look forward to seeing more of your work soon.

Susan

Sugar Hill
by Ja-9

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I can see your commenters love the lupines, and so do I. In fact, this pic is all about the lupines, that's where all the love is with a deep dof and fantastic colour tones and I suspect where most of the NIK was done! If anything the top third - which is frankly just a big distracting chunk of blah that does nothing at all for the overall pic. (By chunk of blah, I mean a whole whack of distracting elements that just sit there and do nothing for the image but draw the eye.The church is cute, but the hazy summer sky and bleachy clouds just don't do it for me. Crop em out and bang, you have the start of a wonderful, strong image with the way the lupines flow together. The elements are all there in the fg. Never be afraid to crop!

Hope this helps

Susan

Smoker
by clickodak

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Marcel, I was one of your 7s because this whimsical image cracked me up, with a *smoking* cigarette collector! Did a wonderful job of meeting the criteria for the challenge. Loving the moustache too, it along with the googly eyes gives the collector a great sense of personality. Your settings look pretty spot on to me.

Now, why didn't this image do better...definitely the flat lighting and mostly grey-on-grey bg just made it too monochrome to look at, until you see the face. I feel that the centredness of the composition is both a strength and a weakness. If there had been a way to shoot it from a different angle - either lower down or more from one side - it may have given you a cleaner bg to shoot against, and a way to avoid the dead-centre comp.

Overall a good effort and it still makes me smile! Hope this ciritique has been helpful.

Susan

Cozy
by RKT

Comment:
nice pic but doesn't say 'kitchen' to me