Arriving Somewhere But Not Here
by CorySmith

Comment:
Critique Club feedback:

For a setup shot, you've shown a good eye for creating a scene that works well with the subject. Here the strong points of the image are the perspective of the street moving back to the horizon and centering the subject within those lines to make her pop out of the scene.

Things that likely held this back are the overall darkness of the image, the background clutter coming up from behind her head and a slightly soft focus on the subject.

If you have access to a flash, that would help light the subject so she stands out more while still allowing you to catch the soft morning light in the sky behind her. You could also take another stab at using various masks and other assorted digital wizardry in your image editor to see what could be done - but there is never a replacement for getting the lighting right 'in real life'.

Shooting the model from a lower point of view, or physically moving her forward to block the clutter coming up from her head would help as well. I would keep the centered placement, just find a spot that hides the light poles. Centered compositions are often panned, but think it works very well here.

Sharp focus is the bread and butter of scoring on DPC. This looks like a dimly lit scene so if you were on auto-focus, your camera might have been struggling to stay locked on. Manual focus may be your friend in a situation like this.

Overall, nice shot!

Glow
by pixel_express

Comment:
Critique Club feedback:

This is an eye catching abstract with pleasing shapes and tones throughout the image.

Two things likely kept this shot from scoring higher. First, even sharpness throughout the shot would present all those wonderful patterns to the viewer in crisp detail. Second, the composition itself is rather haphazard. If this is a crop out of a larger shot, it may be worth experimenting to see where placing the 'focal point' (the blue bit) gives the image the most impact. In my mind I see that spot as being the upper right of the image so that the shapes and colors all point/fade down to the lower left.

Abstracts are not often appealing to DPC voters, and tend to get a love/hate response. The fact that this pulled a strong middle-of-the-road score should be taken as encouraging in my experience.

King of the forest
by hajeka

Comment:
Critique Club feedback:

You've captured a very nice wildlife scene here. The aperture selection works well to focus the eye onto the moose. The blurred out leaves in the foreground on the right side are a bit of a distraction, as they don't actually frame the subject and add no real interest to the overall shot.

Composition is well done, taking heed of the Rule of Thirds.

Free Studies tend to be very demanding in terms of delivering a heavy dose of glitz to the voter. While this image may pop a bit more with a tighter crop and playing with the contrast between subject and the rest of the scene, it's placement would likely not radically change compared to the rest of the entries in the challenge.

Nice work!

Day10.jpg
by FotoMunki

Comment:
This is one of my Week 2 Merit Award selections. Really nice!

[thumb]583142[/thumb]

Day 11
by Puckzzz

Comment:
This is one of my Week 2 Merit Award selections. Great shot!

[thumb]583142[/thumb]

Day6 : e v e n i n g - w a l k
by vikas

Comment:
Another great example of lines leading the eye around the shot. Great tones/lighting.

Day4 : b r e a k f a s t - t i m e
by vikas

Comment:
Like the leading lines and all the play between highlights and the other tones.

Day5 : g l o w i n g - i n - d a r k n e s s
by vikas

Comment:
Maybe just a touch too soft, but that glow is great.

Day 13 - Intertwined
by Budya

Comment:
Very nice. I like this sort of eerie processing myself. Could maybe get those berries just a bit brighterto get them to pop off that lovely background.

Hibiscus on Edge
by dtremain

Comment:
There are aspects of this I like, but I think the composition/crop really keeps it from having the imapct it could.