dazed
by pearlseyes

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

This isn't that bad, it was one of my guesses for Lydia's in that challenge, and I gave you a 6 :-) Comp and use of ambient lighting are good, the sandbank running from right to left balances nicely against the sliver of sky and the longish exposure helps give a convincing, soft abstract feel. The only real thing I don't like is that the colours slightly washy, a little hit of contrast or saturation may have helped.

Susan

A Horse is a Horse of Course
by WonderDude

Comment:
Already critiqued...

A Rope At Rest
by WonderDude

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I gave this a 6 in voting (and guessed a fan, hehe) and agree with what Jake says here, that the comp and oof bg help here, but not the oof loop closest to the camera. I also like the oof lower part of the rope. Your high ISO is bordering on noisy in the bg upper left/centre, and clearly you shot wide open. Keep in mind that most lenses work best at a couple of stops down from wide-open, so f.4 and up would have helped...and again, I see you shot handheld. Time to invest in a lightweight travel tripod!

Susan

A Winter Sunset After A Light Snow
by WonderDude

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Not a bad sunset shot, and a light amount of fallen snow, but this time the voters wanted to see something much more dramatic - big flowing clouds, thunderstorms, insane amounts of snow. This is Ok but it's just a sunset, and those danged trees are in the way! The sculpture(?) or pile of chairs in the lower right third looks like it's meant to be a focal point, but it's too small and insignificant, so the eye goes roaming looking for more.

If this is the kind of photography you want to pursue, get a tripod (even a cheap one will do) and use much longer exposures and much smaller apertures and ISOs to get the kind of dramatic sunset shots that do well here. I don't know many Texas landscape shooters, but maybe Kobba, who tends to like wildlife, has seen some areas that would be good for sunsets. Try PMing him and see.

Hope this helps

Susan

A wise man named Tom
by WonderDude

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

An interesting portrait of an interesting man, to be sure :-) I guess you can see why the number of hand comments, the angle here gives him an even larger set of hands than he already has! The one closest to the viewer is literally the size of his head. If this is what you wanted, it works!

Now, pay attention to the restaurant lighting. The lights are overhead and pointing straight down, so while his forehead, cheekbones, hair and to an extent, his beard, catch the light...the eyes are in harshly defined shadow, as is the mouth. It just doesn't really work. The angle of the booth behind his head draws attention away from him and down the wall to the visible wall light. There's a reason why portraits are generally just head and shoulders!

Hope this helps

Susan

Black & White Rose
by Wildpurple

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I see that I'm one of your 8s, I felt you deserved some extra kudos for entering a flower macro in a challenge dominated by things much bigger than flowers :-) Good comp and lighting, you used HDR to good effect and the b/w works surprisingly well. I would be a little careful in your post work, though, I can see sharpening 'jaggies' and those will cost you. In this case the effect around the droplets especially gives them a bit of a plasticky feel.

Denoise itself can do sharpening on its own, so if you have the original image, maybe just play with a little and just leave out the sharpening. Or do as you did already, but fade back the sharpening to about 50% and see what you think.

Hope this helps

Susan

Liberty Park Tank
by Avinsdad

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I gave this a 5 during voting, mostly because it is well exposed and meets the challenge in that you did use HDR effectively to pull detail out, and it is in BW as stipulated. From your settings I'm guessing you used a tripod, which is perfect for subjects like this.

The main problem with this image is the background clutter of the trees in the park around the tank, and the very, very tight crop on the top left at the end of the gun barrel. The tree underneath the barrel obliterates the line there, and the one further back looks like it's growing from the top of the conning tower (I think that's the right word). Second, with that ultra-tight crop, it looks like the barrel is about to bash into the edge of the photo, and that sudden sense of stopping is just too much.

But it's a good honest attempt, and I do hope you keep on shooting and entering here!

Feel free to PM me with any questions

Susan

The Color of Winter
by posthumous

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

It seems that this challenge was very much one of those hit or miss ones, with very little room for anything between the two. I do like the high-key aspects and stepping into the forest of pinky sepia, but it just doesn't scream HDR at me. Pulling detail from snow in particular is already quite tough and this looks like one of those bleachy winter days. The slow shutterspeed probably did a little too much blurring for some voters here, though I don't mind it. I suppose it's best to save this technique for bigger stuff like the Rockies and large buildings/urban areas!

Hope this helps

Susan

snakes on a tree
by ti

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

Lesson number one if you're going to enter challenges: Read and understand the challenge description, and read and understand the rules, ideally both and before entering an image that appears to have been taken handheld. I can see camera-shake, and nobody can get a sharp, in-focus image handheld at .3 of a second. So if you like to get pics of your snake, a tripod may be a wise investment. A few basic tutorials on composition, lighting, aperture, shutter speed and ISO and how they all need to work together would be of great use to you.

And in the meantime...as I'm sure you've guessed by now - entering a colour image in a b/w challenge isn't a very good idea. And as this challenge also calls for use of a certain photo technique, none of which is evident here, you may want to learn a good deal more about photography overall - either here or elsewhere on the web - before entering here again.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but how else are you to learn what will work here and what won't? Feel free to PM me with any questions.

Texturized
by Phocal

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

What, those things can run? Never would have guessed it, but bet it can dig like hell with those claws! I see that I was one of your 7s, so happy that I was :-) I do like the heavy plating and those hairs on the back over the bands. This is one of the very few times where I can say that I wouldn't have minded seeing a little more contrast and a hit of sharpening just to further emphasize that fantastical texture. The b/w is a good choice as that way the form of the armadillo draws us further in.

Hope this has been helpful!

Susan