Crossing
by timj351

Comment:
you live in a beautiful and photo op rich environment :)

mid winter
by flasher

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

Hi Flasher!

I really like snow and ice winter scenes and I think that they can make terrific landscape shots as well. In my humble opinion, this particular image is slightly weak for a landscape photo. You have 'captured' a landscape with your shot, but my mind is looking for something slightly more dramatic with higher impact. Maybe a wider-scale scene with some more 'land' showing here would create that impact.

The lighting here creates some nice shadow for your shot as well. The shadow areas contain a bit of a 'blue' cast... possibly caused by a polarizing filter? Not completely sure about that but... when this happens, you can often correct it by desaturating the blue/cyan channels in photoshop :) I think that could improve this image just a bit as well.

Keep up the great work :)

John Setzler

Martin hill
by ivana

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

This is a nicely composed landscape. I believe that the horizon being just above center in this particular image works very effectively. Unfortunately, the tint of the sky doesn't really work well for me here, but i know that you can't control the weather :)

I didn't know where "Drugo Selo" was located so i looked it up to find Croatia as the location... I would have expected to see a nice 'cold' weather and wintery scene in that part of the world this time of year :)

Keep up the good work!

John Setzler

OW! I HATE It When That Happens!!!
by albright1

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

I think you did a great job of capturing humor in this image :) Somehow, I think this 'subject' enjoyed this assignment.. lol... The look on his face was the deciding element in this photo for me...

I can't really offer you much real critique on this image because all of the elements come together so nicely. The directional lighting creates a nice drama for this shot that would not have been possible with more light. The balance of light and dark is perfect. The light on the background also helps separate your subject from the background. The detail of his hair is quite visible and not washed out.

Keep up the good work... I have enjoyed watching what you post here :)

John Setzler

Walk of Beauty
by kathleenm

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

Hi Kathleen :)

This is a beautiful shot. The pathway leading into the landscape is a very strong eye element in this image. Your Canon does a beautiful job with the exposure also. I would love to know what kind of lens you are using here also :) I can't really see much room for improvement on this image at all. It looks like you probably used a polarizer on this shot, which was a good choice. The sky seems to be a little deeper blue in the upper right. That could be caused by two different things. 1 - the sun could have been coming in from the left, or 2 - your polarizer could have been twisted slightly the wrong way. Turning a circular poliarzer changes the polarization... If you are using a linear polarizer, it could have been slightly off correct orientation...

Another possibility with this shot would have been to get the camera slightly closer to the road here and shoot at a little higher angle also.. that can create a really nice effect in a scene like this :)

Keep up the great work :)

John Setzler

The Fog Rolls in at Dusk
by sjgleah

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

Hi SJG :)

The 'fog' in this scene is definitely a nice element of the photo. I also like the silhouetted trees framing the right side of the image. What I don't like about this image is the flat color tone. Looking at the camera settings here, it looks to be deliberately underexposed, which created this effect. I"m not sure why... maybe that was necessary to highlight the fog clouds that you reference in the title.

The only suggestion I could maybe offer to improve this shot would be to slow down the shutter and let some more exposure brighten things up a bit :)

Keep up the good work :)

John Setzler

Waterfall
by sulamk

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

Hi Sulamk! I received your email and I feel lucky to have gotten your photo to critique. This will be an example of the types of critiques we are looking for in the Critique Club...

I love a waterfall. I enjoy photographing them myself and here are a few examples of some I have done in the past:

//www.pbase.com/image/5520374
//www.pbase.com/image/5555604
//www.pbase.com/image/8563364

I think you did a great job of capturing this particular waterall in the context of the 'landscape' challenge. Your vista in this particular shot covers the waterfall and plenty of surrounding land as well :)

One of the things about this image that I particularly like is the color contrasts. The blue sky / red rocks / greenery work very well together in this image. The waterfall itself is just a nice single element that makes this image stand out. I believe that all great landscape shots, contrary to the finishing order in the challenge this week, need some single 'strong' element for the viewer's eye to come to rest on. Your waterfall profides that to me in this image.

As for a possible improvement on this image...

I'm looking at your camera settings. My personal preference on waterfall photos, as shown in my examples, is 'soft' water created by a slower shutter speed with the camera. There is a simple trick to getting this. Your aperture was set to F4.5 and a shutter speed of 1/160". Without knowing any better, I would assume that this was a 'point and shoot' shot taken with the default camera settings.

If you had chosed aperture priority and setup with a smaller aperture (larger F number), your shutter speed would have slowed down some which would have created 'softer' water in this shot. You can also get even longer shutter speeds in a situation like this by using a polarizer or a neutral density filter on your camera.

For more information about shutter and aperture priority photo modes, take a look at my tutorial on DPC at:

Controlling Your Exposure

This tutorial explains how aperture and shutter priority affect your images...

Keep up the good work and I will be in touch with some links for you on critiques very soon :)

John Setzler

Frozen Forest
by karmat

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

Hi Karma :)

The 'landscape' scope of this shot is fairly narrow, but, IMO, that is OK. I did a fairly narrow landscape myself for this challenge.

There are a couple of things that bother me slightly about this particular image. First of all, it looks under exposed. It's sorta 'flat' on the color and tone ranges. I can see that it is a 4" exposure so this must have been shot in deep shade or at dusk. In a situation like this, I normally use a larger aperture... somewhere around F2.8 or F3.5 on this one would have worked nicely :) The image has an overall 'blue' cast to it. I'm not sure how your white balance was set, but an adjustment in this would have fixed that right up with the 707. Thirdly, the camera is tilted to the right. In a scene like this, the icecicles should hang vertically. The slant of the icecicles gives that one away pretty quickly :)

Keep up the good work :)

John Setzler

"Break the Blue" - Dime Store Prophets
by brandonarbini

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

Brandon,

I think this is a great shot. I'm not familiar with the song, but I think the image fits the title quite well :) I really like the shallow depth of field presented here. I'm a sucker for strong contrasts. The tonal range of this image is also very impressive. It's one of those images that I would like to reach out and touch. The sharpness of the broken glass shards are part of what makes this a high impact image for me. I can't really make any suggestions for improvement for you on this image, and I'm not sure why it did not score higher than it did. I haven't read your comments on this image yet, but I will go do that. The only thing I can imagine that would have cost points on this photo is the shallow depth of field. That single aspect is what makes this photo so strong in my opinion. Some people like to see everyting in focus, whether it makes a stronger image or not.

Keep up the great work :)

John Setzler

** After reviewing your comments on this image, I definitely have NO idea why it didn't score better. There is no indication of why it wasn't better received... your comments seem to support this image... go figger....


Message edited by author 2003-01-19 02:00:31.

The wall (Pink Floyd)
by Parentx

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club :)

Pink Floyd... one of my favorite groups of all time... "The Wall" represents a lot of things in the movie and on the 'album' as well. It primarily seems to represent oppression, in my opinion. The graffiti on your wall represents the uprising against the oppression in a very strong way... The black and red against the white paint can make a good representation of death and the 'dying'...

I think my only misunderstanding in this image is the red brickwork at the top of your image. I don't see where it 'fits' in the theme. If this was my photo, I would have expolred the possiblities of cropping that part out maybe...

I normally do not like photographs that don't show 'depth', but this is one exception to that. Since I'm familiar with the song, I can definitely see lots of other 'dimension' in this photo.

I can't really offer you any technical critique on this photo because I can't see how it could be technically any better...

Keep up the good work :)

John Setzler