Draughts (circa 1836)
by blachlym

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club...

Welcome to DPChallenge :) 5.1 is not a terrible score but you didn't manage to make it into the top 50% of the images in this challenge. It's not an easy thing to do around here, but with a little time and patience you will get there soon enough if you stick to it. Since you are new here, I'll share a few ideas that will help you move up in the ranks.

1. Meeting the challenge

That's obviously critical. If you don't obviously meet the challenge topic with your image, you won't usually do very well. Your photo, in this case, meets the challenge with no questions asked. That's a good thing. That being said, meeting the challenge is a relatively small part of doing well on this site. Meeting the challenge doesn't carry as much merit as you will lose if you don't meet it.

2. Visual / emotional impact

Visual and emotional impact are probably the two most important elements of a challenge photo. A high level of this coupled with meeting the challenge produces winning images. Your photo doesn't have much of this in my opinion. In this environment of photographers from multiple backgrounds and skill levels, postcard type photography tends to do well.

3. Technicals

In my personal opinion, if you have high levels of the first two parts of this discussion, the technicals don't matter as much. The comments you received in this challenge seem to complain mainly about the lack of sharpness in the photo, which may be from the slow shutter speed which caused some motion blur. If the visual and/or emotional impact of the image is high enough, the technicals become less of an issue. If the technicals are good as well, it just adds to the overall performance of the image.

Subject choice is always the toughest part of artistic photography. Viewer subjectivity will make or break you every time. Some people will like it and some won't, and deep down as an artist, you always want to impress someone. Don't forget to make yourself happy with the image though. If you are shooting stuff for someone else rather than to satisfy your own interests in the art, you won't get very far in the long run :)

Mourning dew
by Plouc

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club...

A score of 4.74 isn't particularly impressive in this challenge unfortunately. You have to ask yourself why viewers didn't like this image, and there are several potential explanations that I'll touch on here. The first one that comes to mind for me is your choice of subject. In a "Life and Death" challenge, I would expect to see a lot of tombstones. It's a stereotypical choice of subject for this challenge and it's also an easily accessible subject, so I expect that this challenge was full of them (I didn't vote in the challenge so I don't really know this to be true... It's just an assumption.) With the establishment of a stereotypical choice of subjects, you are forced to provide a much higher level of visual and/or emotional impact. The perspective you chose is interesting, but the light and environment just don't seem to provide any particular interest. The interesting detail in this cross seem to be at the top rather than the bottom, and your choice of perspective doesn't really highlight the interesting part of the subject. The top of the cross also argues with the tree in the background for attention. I'm not sure how to suggest improving this photo other than exploring your compositional opportunities and working with some more interesting light options...

The Light of Life
by hallgrg

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club...

This photo obviously meets the challenge very well :) I don't often grab a first place image through the Critique Club queue, but I got lucky today. Great images are always rather easy to critique, because it's difficult to find anything critical to say about them. Your creative use of lighting and post processing on this image create a lot of visual and emotional impact in the story you are telling with your camera. The theme is obvious, and I particularly like the contrast provided between life and death through the use of the old tombstone and the young girl. On the technical side, the only suggestion I have for you would be to have used a slightly smaller aperture than the chosen f/1.4. The focus on the young girl is strong, but in my humble opinion, I think the cross on the tombstone should get equal attention in the realm of sharpness and focus. The camera angle with these subjects allowed the cross to fall slightly behind the depth of field with this technique.

The great images continue to flow from Iceland :) Great work... Kudos :)

An Age Gone By
by JulietNN

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club... (better late than never!)

I think the light and warmth offered in this image is extremely nice. It tells an interesting story of a young girl getting lost in her own world of dress-up and make believe through the clothing, doll, and other associated elements within the field of view. Images like this one aren't easy to do on a compositional level. The complexity of this photograph reminds me a lot, oddly enough, of some landscape photography where there is so much going on within the image that the viewer is just allowed to get lost and enter the world being offered by the photographer (or painter or whatever other kind of artist might be involved). The difference between your image and others that I consider to be overly complex is that the detail comes together in this photo to support the overall theme and idea being presented. This photo really does remind me of a lot of victorian-age paintings that I have seen. It's really nice work... Keep it up :)

Shadow Walker
by Nuzzer

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club...

This is an excellent photo as shown by the score you received in this challenge. I love the silhouette exposure and the overall high contrast of this photograph. Compositionally I can understand your own comments on this image with the subject being centered in the frame. In general, the rule of thumb for centered subjects is just like the rule about centered horizons. When the primary point of interest is in the center of the frame, it needs to be supported by either zero interest surrounding it or have equal amounts of interest all the way around it. Whether or not your clouds are supportive of this subject is probably quite subjective. My personal subjective interest in this image is mainly in the lower half of the frame because the leading lines all point back to your main point of interest. I wouldn't really consider the clouds as a point of support for the subject.

I think there is a very strong square composition in this photograph. This square would be created by cropping at the top just above the sphere of the sun and just below the patch spot in the pavement.

Another trick you might want to explore sometime in situations like this one is to create a 'sun star' with your exposure. They are relatively easy to do but they require the use of a polarizer and a much smaller aperture than you chose in this exposure. As you can see, you have the beginnings of this 'star' forming from the sun, but that technique will create a really nice star for you if you give it a try sometime...

Nice work and congrats on the excellent score :)

gorgeuos_browneyes12
by benfica

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club...

Having a beautiful subject goes a long way towards making excellent studio-type portraits. Unfortunately, I tend to be a little harsh on studio work for several reasons. In this environment, the photographer has complete control over lighting, posing, and composition, so anything that "I", as a critique giver, find out of line is considered a mistake :) Also, keep in mind that a critique is simply an opinion of your work from another person who is biased by their own preferences and experiences...

Your light in this image has created some compositional issues that jump out at me rather quickly. In a studio setting, there is no real reason to not create a lighting situation that shows some amount of detail throughout the entire subject. In this particular image, the directional lighting is strong enough (and probably from only a single direction) that it's creating a lot of loss in shadow detail in the hair and on the face towards the right side of the image. The ear and jewelry managed to find a little light, but that anatomical feature is floating in a sea of darkness. Dark hair on a dark background is almost always improved in appearance by back lighting it with a spot of some sort to create a contrasting edge. It also creates a glow that usually enhances the overall feel of the image. As for improving the lighting in this image, I think you could have salvaged the detail AND maintained the high contrast by using a reflector a few feet away to bounce just a little bit of the light source back into the dark areas of this image.

My personal common theme on offering portrait work into a photo competition such as these here at DPC is rather simple. When you provide an image like this, you need a 'hook' of some sort that intrigues the viewer into falling in love with the image when they have no personal connection with the subject. IMHO, this is a good photo, but it stops at that. What part of this photo should I find compelling in an artistic sense? What makes it above average? What gives it an artistic edge that would make me give it a score in the 8-9-10 range? She's a beautiful girl. I see hundreds of photos of beautiful girls every week. What sets this one apart from the rest?

Just some food for thought :)

Msdoubletrouble
by snaffles

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club...

This is a rather difficult challenge to 'critique' because of the simple nature of the challenge itself. You were asked to create a photo that represents another user's 'name' on the site, which really limits you to creativity. Sometimes it's easier to shoot an image and then try to find a username that fits the photo rather than the other way around. Meeting the challenge is a given in this competition, so you can't really get dinged for that. Since not meeting the challenge isn't really possible here, what do you have left to be judged on?

In any challenge, if you spend some time looking around the site, the images that score highest ALWAYS have some sort of special appeal, whether it be visual, emotional, or technical. Your photo scored a 5.3, which is what I consider to be a mediocre result. When photos score in this range, the collective vote is telling you that there is nothing really wrong with your image, but there is also nothing compelling about it. No one found it offensive while no one found it outstanding either. Just over 80% of the votes you received were in the 4-5-6 range which is definitely middle of the road.

As I look at your image, I don't find anything compelling about it. Harsh sunlight is generally not a great time to shoot photos of anything because of the high contrast it creates. I do find donkeys interesting in general, but you really have to work them to get intriguing images. The comments you received in this challenge don't really offer you anything either except for the one that mentions the same harsh light situation I suggested in this critique. If these two donkeys are truly what you set out to photograph for this challenge, you might have fared better by visiting them early in the morning or late in the afternoon where some shade or overcast weather conditions could have provided a more inviting light situation for your camera. You might have also tried to coax them closer to you where you could fill the frame with their faces and create a higher overall impact rather than just having the two of them standing in in a bare spot in their landscape.

Photography, in a serious sense, is a game of time and patience. You need a lot of both to consistently create images that inspire awe and wonder :)

Keep working hard at it :)

The New Bean Town
by tpbremer

Comment:
Excellent stuff :) There are so many different and excellent opportunities at this spot... I hope to make it back to Chicago sometime in the future and spend several hours during the day and at night here.... beautiful abstract... 10 and +fav...

HOPE HAS ARRIVED : Saghakan Slum, Tacloban, Philippines
by hotpasta

Comment:
This is a phenomenal photograph. I can only imagine what it would be like to do this sort of missionary work, but I bet it would be life-changing, to say the least. I read your comments on the image, and this is one of those images where your crop and technical factors don't really matter so much. What's in the image speaks much louder than its presentation. Excellent work :)

Significant Moments: Learning to Swim!
by Paul

Comment:
"Is it the best image I have taken? Not even close; does it capture a slice of life I'm happy to share - Yes it does. "

I wish more people looked at photography for this reason :)