Wedding Dress
by mindylue

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Nice shot, I like the idea and can see you were going for a very dreamy look here and did your best to execute that with ambient light and available settings. I just wish this was a shot of a little girl wearing flowers on her head, not flowers resting on the head of a little girl. I hope you understand and see the difference, because the flowers - in terms of size, colour, sharpness, everything really - completely dominate the shot. She is almost an afterthought. A simple daisy chain or something similar would have worked so much better, that headpiece looks like what the MIL would wear.

Technically, I don't understand why you used such a shallow dof. The eyes are not in focus and having to rely on pp tricks to fix them is very weak. Unless you have razor-sharp focus on the eyes, never, ever use such a shallow aperture for a portrait. The fast shutter speed is understandable for a fidgety child, but an ISO of 400 that nearly blows out the right side of the shot and thus gives you yet more to fix in post...not necessary. ISO 200 should be your max for daylight, esp with sunlight and so little dof.

Sorry to be harsh but I want you to see where you went wrong, and try to help you from making the same mistakes in the future.

Feel free to PM me

Susan

Panic !!!
by clickodak

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Bwahahahahaaaa...Marcel, I had the feeling that I was going to end up with the crit for this image! Absolutely great capture, all the geese on the ground help to add a sense of stability as all their friends take flight. I can't even go with my all-time favourite nitpick of bleachiness, because there isn't any :-) Fascinating to see the varying amounts of tones in just simple off-white and the brown/tan of the heads. Amazed that you avoided areas of flat black, and your settings are dead on for shot like this.

Again, so glad to see this shot ribbon! Congrats yet again and continue to shoot and enter and win more ribbons :-)

Susan

Dock Serenity
by Transparant

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

It's always chancy, shooting a landscape or seascape and using a square crop, but I think it works nicely here. Lots of long straight lines here so I really like the old pilings curving away at the left top of the pier, it adds a softer effect that goes well with the colours. Gorgeous lush colours, a tiny little bit of saturation wouldn't hurt. Wonder if anyone else sees the person atop the piling at more or less where horizon and sky meet, at the left?

I do agree with the comment on the crop being a little 50/50 in terms of the horizon and sky. Decide which dominates, and crop in its favour. In this case, yes, you should have cropped out the top 1/4 of this pic and let the water and its elements have its day.

Love the settings, obvious that you used a tripod and took care to scout out a suitable pier for your purposes. That's what separates photographers from those who just shoot snapshots.

Please continue to shoot and enter, we need more work like this here!

Feel free to PM me with any questions

Susan

Temple arch
by tigerluong

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I see that I gave this a 6 during voting, because I could see some effort was made.

But this is a case of so close, yet so far. Very nice shot of the temple, crisp and sharp. But as already mentioned, the foliage especially in front and middle of the shot ruins the view. This looks to have been shot while you were sitting at a table. Something as simple as just standing up and getting a good, clear, uncluttered shot would have been much more effective.

I can tell from the very high shutter speed that you were probably shooting handheld. Nothing wrong with that, but the temple isn't going anywhere. You need to shoot that fast for, say, most children or animals in motion, but hardly for a building. A slower shutter, even more dof and even more importantly, a tripod would come in handy here.

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

Susan

Family Portrait
by pert86

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I like the idea of the two attentive Poms framing the baby, and the overhead shot of the father, just wish the mom had gone with the same idea and united the pic in that pose :-)

Cute content fur sure, but there are many technical issues that spoil the shot.

First, there is no composition to the shot. The eye is going all over the place looking for a focal point, and there is none. If it's meant to be the sleepy and/or inattentive infant, well, the Poms just stole the show from them. Dad's tat lends some interest to the shot but that's all, and it should not be the focus of attention.

Also, the colours are washy and the whites are very bleachy - why on earth would you use such a high ISO unless they were sitting in a dark corner of the room?! The fast shutter and shallow dof, I get, but you never, ever want to shoot with a higher ISO than absolutely necessary. With what looks like ambient light used here as seen by bleachiness on woman's arm and that dog, 200-400 should have been fine.

Sorry if this critique sounds harsh, but this is what I see. I feel that you are new to photography and still have a lot to learn. DPC is excellent as a learning site, and you may want to focus a bit more on the basics before entering challenges.

Feel free to PM me

Susan

Horsewoman in Native Arab Costume
by LindaLee

Comment:
why the fake tail?

oLd sOuL
by tate

Comment:
Hope she got a raise in her allowance, good work!

Father and Son
by vawendy

Comment:
Fun and effective, well done!

A Little Mad
by jomari

Comment:
Insane and hilarious...well done on the blue!

Framed
by sfalice

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Ah, fun with poppies...you sure look like you enjoyed playing with the colours and deconstructing and reconstructing the poppy in all its intricacies. Nice and symmetrical, fun to look at, but do keep in mind that this is looking more like digital art and less like a photo. Just sayin!

Susan