TomYum Seafood Noodles
by GeorgesBogaert

Comment:
Yum yum yum....congrats on the blue, I can't wait to see if I can find Tom Yum pasta over here! :-)

Whats on the other side?
by docjonny

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

So we meet once again, docjonny...hehehe...;-)

This is an intriguing shot with the frozen water droplets and trying to capture the spray. This kind of shot is very difficult to get, so kudos for trying! However, the dam(?) over which the water is flowing is huge and dark and has dramatic shadows and is in focus so it immediately dominates the composition; when I see the tiny little white villa in the background, it is only because the brightness draws my eye there...then it returns to the dam.

The thing to do here is to move a bit so the spray from the water obscures the villa, but to get the villa in focus as much as possible. Either that or try different subject matter, some photogs would simply position a nude or bikin-clad girl behind the main fall of water and use that:-)

Again, a good effort at meeting the challenge, but this seems to be a case of biting off a little more than you can easily chew.

Hope this helps, please keep entering!

Susan

Lone Tree
by Transparant

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

This is a well-exposed shot and meets the requirement of being in b/w...but the portrait orientation, instead of the much wider, horizontal landscape orientation, is one reason why this image did not do well. This is a photo of a tree, first and foremost, and it is simply not a lone tree.

There are many simple fixes here. First, crop your photo to landscape orientation; I can see by your settings that you used a tripod but it might have been good to reduce the depth of field so the back treeline would be out of focus and hopefully help highlight your lone tree more effectively. Also at f.11 and twilight, it is already very murky, so you want more light either with a wider aperture or longer exposure.

Finally, my favouritest thing to do in the world...change your point of view. This looks like it was shot at regular human standing eye level. If you want to isolate that tree and truly make it the only tree in the shot, be ready to squat down, or kneel or even lay belly down in the dirt and shoot up to get that one tree in the shot and no others.

Try even just one of these small techniques and see the difference it makes!

Hope this helps,

Susan

Summer in the hills
by docjonny

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Wow, love the way that the trees look almost like clouds! Wonderful alternating layers of light and dark, smooth fields and bumpy forests. Fantastic level of toning with no bleachy white expanses, though I do see true white in the foreground and areas of true black scattered throughout. Meets the challenge perfectly.

The one problem with this image is that there is just too much of it. There are too many houses, all competing for attention and all roughly the same scale, so there is no true focal point. However, if you crop the image so area where the two big swatches of field are broken up with light, you can see that they lead to that tiny little house all on its own on the far right. The treeline behind it leads to that same house as does the delicate fenceline. BINGO! There's your shot! You could even leave in some of the froth of trees up and above that house, as the squareness of the house breaks up all the flowing lines leading to it.

So take this pic, crop it as per above, and look at the difference.

Hope this helps!

Susan

I went fishing
by Neat

Comment:
fabulous tones

It Gets Lonely
by asij

Comment:
love the flag at half-mast :-)

More time for bizarre mating experiments
by vawendy

Comment:
Wendy, that is just plain mean! Poor squirrel!

IMG_3772_2
by skewsme

Comment:
that is so twisted and funny! 8 for public lol

The Blocking
by tigerluong

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

This image is a very good capture, even in less than perfect lighting conditions. Sometimes you just have to make do with what is available. Personally I find your shutter speed very slow for a basketball game - I would probably shoot at least 1/400 if not faster - but you give no details on camera or lens, so difficult to critique your choices. Did you shoot on *green camera* mode? If so then the camera made all the choices, not you, and you can tell.

The main reason you did poorly, as I see it, is because the image is OK...but you used so much blur in the post processing. If the image itself is not very good, then all the work you do in post only shows up all the more because it is so obvious, as it is here.

This is a very, very competitive site where capturing a good image is first and foremost in people's minds. If the pp work done only highlights the weaknesses in the photo, you will not get a good score.

My apologies if this sounds harsh, but that is how it is.

Feel free to PM me with any questions,

Susan

Water in the dry lands
by Transparant

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I love the tones in this image, you have caught twilight very well. The light texture and ripples in the clouds, the pastels are wonderful, and they contrast perfectly with the darkness and heavy cracks in the dry mud. The reflections in standing pools of water are great too.

So why didn't DPC voters, infamous for loving landscapes/seascapes/sunsets in their Free Studies, vote this image higher? From my own experience here, there are three key reasons:

1) Portrait orientation for a landscape. Not for nothing is horizontal orientation often called 'landscape'!

2) Tied into that...often voters look at images on a phone or device, and must scroll down in order to see the full picture, and lose some of the impact of the image that way. And most importantly...

3) Though a lovely setting...it's a very static shot with no true focal point to draw the eye. Even just one person caught walking through the frame would help unite that lovely sky with the foreground, tie it all together, give a sense of scale to the image and interest.

Hope this has been useful,

Susan