Capitol Moonrise
by levyj413

Comment:
Nice finish Jeffrey!

Moonglow over Polenz Ranch
by nam

Comment:
Congrats on the HM. This was my favorite 'creation' during voting.

Scratch
by gyaban

Comment:
Very creative Christoph

Vollmond
by damoninja

Comment:
Excellent job. Very well done.

By the light of the silvery moon
by Judi

Comment:
Great Job Judi. I like this one.

Twirl
by levyj413

Comment:
I like the approach to create softness, but I want the eyes to be sharp, but it is her forehead and hair that are in focus instead. Also, I am not crazy about the background - a bit too much detail in it, especially with the level of softness on the subject.

by MinsoPhoto

Comment:
Josh - i really love the setting a great deal. The light in the background is magical and the processing treatment on it is quite special. I am not personally that fond of the processing on your very attractive model. In some ways it seems to conflict with the softness of the background. Yes, the pillar is hard edged and highly detailed, but I am not sure I like the same treatment on the model.

Architecture
by antje1777

Comment:
I really like it the way it is right now. I gave it a 7 during voting - absolutely loving the birds.

I can see where nam is going and upping the contrast to expand the tonal range, but I like the richness of the grays throughout. I actually tried it, and had I been able to 'see this shot', I would have like entered a much more pimped up and contrast-y version.

Old Crossing
by PuppyDogMom

Comment:
I tend to agree with Neil on this. There is no obvious direct focus for the viewer. In fact, there are no visible train tracks, but rather the bridge that is holding the train tracks. The best thing about train tracks are the inherent leading lines that pull the viewer into the scene. In this shot, we are looking across a bridge into an area without much interest.

River-w-Milky-Way
by glockguy

Comment:
Al, first off...that is one amazing sky! Where was this taken?

Things I see about the image:
1) the sky is the real subject of this image IMO and I think it needs to have more than 25-50% of the real estate. Did you take any other images where the sky is a much bigger portion of the scene? This iamge seems to be looking straight ahead up the river bed, and I think some looking up more would even be more dramatic.

See the recent Blue Ribbon winner for what I am talking about - the sky is the star - and the horizon is very low indeed.


2) As with many landscapes, centered horizons seem to be give a very static look. Placing the horizon at the bottom third would help out with point 1.

2) the foreground seems a bit cluttered to me. I can see why the logs are of interest to you, but the bottom of the image is distracting to the overall scene. One way to fix this would be to crop the bottom of the image a bit. This might also help you with removing the centered horizon.

3) I do like how you framed the sky and edges of the scene with the pine trees on each side. , but it seems like there was even more 'height' in the trees that you could have used to extend it up to the sky more.

4) The image is quite a bit underexposed. A minor adjustment of Levels (see below) can bring a lot more finish to the image, allowing the foreground to be seen while preserving the night time feel.

I hope you don't mind but tried a quick edit on this by adjusting the levels (moved the midpoint from 1.00 to 1.15 and whites from 255 to 200.) This allowed the stars in the sky to be a bit brighter and the foreground to brighten as well. Second, I tried a crop to frame the sky with the pines even more and cropped out the low foreground to move the horizon down a bit. And third, I added a bit more sky into the image to show see what it might look like with a higher perspective. The crop isn't great and it is a bit elongated in the horizontal direction, but it gives you the idea.



Message edited by author 2012-09-09 06:53:02.