As the son of a son of a sailor
by firstkiss

Comment:
I love the soft tans of this photo. However, your little sailor's face loses in competition with the sunset. I'm not sure what lighting tools you have available, but some light reflected up at his face would brighten those rosy cheeks and make him the dominate subject. Outside of this challenge a quick dodging of his face in Photoshop gives the same effect.

Lovely photo, none-the-less.

Emergence
by SandyP

Comment:
The soft emerald of the water is so beautiful. I might have cropped out a small bit from the bottom and right side, but the turtle is so damn cute he demands attention. Ta' heck with rule of thirds!

=)

Hair
by Bruce_the_Robert

Comment:
When I was browsing through this challenge I came to your photo, paused for a second, and then fell in love with it. It's absolutely beautiful. I love how the hair nearly fills every corner. The corner it doesn't touch is your ground. Being the darkest part of your photo it gives the eye something to hold on to with all the craziness going on. While the pink cast of the hair seems a bit unnatural, it's melds well with the other colors in the photo.

Overall, there's almost a sense of mystery. You can't clearly see her eye, and that creates a natural intrigue. I find myself wanting to part her hair and touch what is obviously a baby soft rosy cheek. I would feel weird about hanging someone else's kid on my wall, but if this were my kid she'd be on a full sized canvas. I'd hang her in my entrance so everyone could see what a beautiful child I had and what a great photographer I was!

Curious
by SDW

Comment:
When I look at the photo the horses head begs to come out of the photo. It's clearly the main focus and why you chose a close-up shot to begin with. As you and others have mentioned, there's a headless horse in the background, so obviously your framing wasn't ideal. Blurring the background probably did help to deemphasize the distracting background.

I threw your photo in Photoshop to see what I would do to the photo if it were mine. The very first thing I did was add a vignette (I'm on a vignette kick lately). I did it the quick and dirty way by just burning the corners. Next I whipped out the dodge tool. I focused on the head, since that's what needs to stand out. I brightened the stripe down her nose and touched on the sunlight on her eyelids and nostrils. It still seemed a little dark, so I did a couple more passovers of the whole head with the dodge tool. I burnt the eyes to make them blacker and make them stand out.

The Story of my Life
by Alain

Comment:
This truly is a beautiful image. It's hard to believe that it's snow!

As I stared at it I remembered an old cd cover I made years ago. The image is actually clipart that was on some advertising cd with generic images.



Like a few others mentioned, I think part of the appeal is the gentle curve of what appears to be a woman's back. The softness of the edges add mystery and anonymity. I think it's possibly programmed in the human mind to find the curve of a woman's body soothing.

new.york.city.
by AP

Comment:
I've seen hight time cityscapes. I've seen night time bridge shots. I've seen long exposure tail lights. I can't recall ever seeing this shot.

This is a very nice perspective. The bumps on the metal structure compete for attention with the city lights and the traffic, but in this case I think that's a good thing. It's almost like you broke so many "rules", it works! Hell, I can't even tell where the horizon is supposed to be, and I don't care.

You've created a very interesting photo. There's so much to look at.

Winter Waterfront
by NikonJeb

Comment:
I had to look around the results of this photo to try and understand why it placed where it did. It really didn't deserve a 5.3, but there's some great photos that placed above it. There's some not-so-great ones up there too, but they're the typical DPC crowd pleasers to which I say "eh..."

This is an absolutely beautiful scene. If the foreground tree wasn't where it is, I'd have no qualms with the composition, but as it is, I want to push it out of the way.

Your processing does seem a bit rough. You say there was "minimal doinking," but it looks over sharpened. I love the colors though. One thing I noticed was a pale pink in the background along the water line. If you could bring that out a touch, I think it would add greatly to the whole image.

Overall this is a great winter image that is very telling of the area you live. There is a lot of great elements. If I had voted I would have given it no less than a 7. Knock out the tree and give me some pink and it would have been a 9.

Poetry
by zxaar

Comment:
I remember seeing this during the challenge and thinking to myself "wow.. that's not going to do well." I almost instantly appreciated the beauty of the photo though. It is very Impressionistic.

You're photo quite clearly belongs on a wall. It is very much a painting. Unfortunately, the voters on DPC don't usually appreciate photos that aren't perfectly crisp with a clear subject and colors they expect to see.

In your own words you were "trying something different." In looking at other photos in your profile, I can tell you that you don't need my advice on how to take a photo. I think this photo was just an experiment that isn't appreciated by the masses in this venue. If it were a painting on a wall in a museum the opinions would be vastly different. Keep experimenting. You're a great photographer!

Willie The Pimp (Harlem, 2008)
by pawdrix

Comment:
This one really is a mystery. I'm sure by now you know your candids are under appreciated, but quality wise it's no lesser quality than your higher scoring ones. I don't think that elbow in the shot should have knocked you so low, so I wonder if it's the actual subject that people didn't like.

I remember seeing this during the voting and asking myself "how does he know he's a pimp?" At the time I didn't know it was your photo, although I should have since it screams Pawdrix. Since I didn't know it was you I thought the photographer was just stereotyping this guy and had I voted, it may have had an effect on the score. To most of the world pimps are just something we see in the movies.

If this photo were on a themed website that was documenting New York streets it would seem less out of place. In the DPC environment it seems like a photo of a snappy dresser being labeled as a pimp.

With that all said it's a very interesting photo. People always seem so relaxed and natural in your photos. These are definitely not people you'd see walking down Oregon streets, heh.

A different kind of street
by Kelli

Comment:
That looks like such a fun parade! The costumes are fantastic. You captured the vivid colors well. Those bright colors are so easily over exposed.

It looks like you were in a shaded area, so my suggestion for next time might be to bump up your ISO a bit so that you can use a faster shutter speed. Paraders do a lot of waving and their costumes generally have a lot of moving pieces. I think that movement blur really had a negative impact on the shot.

Composition wise, it's a candid so several rules are often forgivable, but there's still the basics to keep in mind to make the image powerful. If you look at your rule of thirds you have the tail end of a car and the subject's wave, your subject, and then the next row of paraders. The tail end of the car cheapens the shot. I know, I know.. cars are big part of parades, but I find it distracting for this shot. It takes away from the parader's wave, which should be the main action of the shot.

I think your final score may have been lower than if you had entered this into more of a themed challenge. Freestudies are tough.