washington monument
by asimchoudhri

Comment:
You got a really nice, clean reflection. The monument by itself is usually kind of dull, but you found a great way to add interest. Well done!

Solitary Surf
by noraneko

Comment:
Nice, quiet shot, Catherine. I really liked the tones and the fading surf.

Pysanka Red Wheat Star
by noraneko

Comment:
Wow, that's gorgeous! I'm glad I read your interview, or I'd never have seen it. :)

Infinitesimal Planetesimals
by freakin_hilarious

Comment:
Wow, that's a very cool shot. Good creative thinking! Your commenters certainly loved it. :)

Double Bubble
by Kelli

Comment:
Kelli, I have to agree with the gist of the people who commented during the challenge, but wow - 1s from each of them seems very low. I voted this a 5.

I like your crop, I like the closeup of his face, and I like how one eye appears behind a bubble.

I had two issues: lighting and the background. It's quite dark without it seeming like you wanted a dark shot. I mean, bubbles and kids are usually a light, bright, fun subject, not dark and brooding. I suggest trying it maybe a foot from a very bright lamp. I'm regularly amazed at how dim artificial lighting is; it doesn't look that way to my eyes, but it does to my camera.

The background behind the bubbles looks like a TV, which adds to the feeling of a quick snapshot as opposed to a carefully composed contest entry. That is, it's a nice memory-keeper photo, but not something that's going to score highly. In the future (if you care), think as hard about the background as you do the rest of the shot. You might try it again with a simply colored background that will add some interest and make the bubbles stand out. I use posterboard of various colors.

One more thing: watch out for those very wide-open apertures. In this case, his ear and shirt end up blurry because the DOF is so narrow.

I encourage you to explore bubbles some more. I've seen some pretty cool shots.

One Rainy Day
by shalrath

Comment:
Congrats! New personal best and your first ribbon, all wrapped into one. :)

NASDAQ
by dsterner

Comment:
Hi. I'm responding to your request for comment.

First, I would've voted this a 6 or 7 had I seen it. So everything I'm going to say comes from that starting point. You did several things very well: the overall composition, the use of and placement of the glasses, the nice shallow DOF. To say nothing of the idea in the first place! Unlike me, you chose an acronym that's actually well-known. :)

I'm no expert on what the average DPCer thinks, but I'm guessing you would've scored better with two changes:
1) Add more contrast. Without doing it myself, I'm not sure how much you could push it; newspaper really is gray, not white.

2) Crop out the top and left because the table and the fold distract from the nice simple composition of glasses and newspaper. Given the image dimensions, I'm guessing you didn't crop at all, and there's not much room to crop from this specific shot. So this advice falls into the "when you shoot next time." Pay a lot of attention to little angles and slivers of stuff creeping into the edges that you don't want to have in your final image. I've heard it called "border patrol" - visually sweep your eye along the outer edge before hitting the shutter button. In this case, simply unfolding the newspaper to fill the frame would've taken care of it.

Frankly, I'm no genius at that, and I'm agonizing right now about an upcoming challenge entry that wasn't quite right when I shot it, but I don't have excess pixels to play with. So just work on it as much as you can.

Finally, look at your commenters' average: 6.67! You obviously connected very strongly with those folks. Average scores are a bit of a crapshoot, so I try to focus on the people who really like my shots. There will always be some people who don't much care for any shot, so don't worry about them.

Slippery Circles
by cogerox

Comment:
Cool angle!

Magic Rings
by jgrieco

Comment:
I hope you'll explain how you did this!

Circles Of Gold
by Retusnavy

Comment:
The idea is nice, as is the selective desat. But the composition, with the ear dead center, feels too documentary as opposed to dramatic.