no pavement, just chain link and razor wire
by stepwalker87

Comment by Yo_Spiff:
I think many of the others failed to realize this was the main road on a military base in Iraq. It probably has no name. Perhaps if your title had made reference to that, it might have lessened the DNMC blow. Maybe.

no pavement, just chain link and razor wire
by stepwalker87

Comment by Yo_Spiff:
Far from a perfect shot. Overly dark shadows, blown highlights. A point well made, however, and that gets it a vote on the positive side of the scale from me.

candycane(no edit)
by stepwalker87

Comment by Jutilda:
I'd increase the saturation of red about 15%. Nice for a straight out of the camera.

no pavement, just chain link and razor wire
by stepwalker87

Comment by denbote:
The title of your entry should be the name of the road.

all i need
by stepwalker87

Comment by David Ey:
Thank you for what you do. May you be safe, kill the enemy and return home whole.

all i need
by stepwalker87

Comment by pixelpig:
Aside from the flat light (already mentioned by others), & the plywood BG not covering all the BG in the upper R corner, & the necessity of explaining the relationship of the gun to the apple--a gun is a difficult subject to capture well. There are a lot of details to deal with, it is difficult to light, & difficult to pose so that it doesn't look like a product in a catalog. The most successful gun photos seem to be where the gun is aimed into the lens right at the viewer but this creates an emotional impact that makes it difficult to concentrate on voting. You got mostly 4 & 5 scores, not too bad for a first entry. Keep 'em comin'!

candycane(no edit)
by stepwalker87

Comment by hotpasta:
it's just boring...sorry :(

central composition, no creativity, bland bg...just doesn't work for me 4

badapple re edited
by stepwalker87

Comment by Sioux:
I do like the re-edited version better, but I enjoyed a good laugh with the first one. (I'm one of your 7s.) Perhaps if the title had been a little less subtle others would have gotten the humor. I would have preferred a lighter colored apple which would have stood out more on the first version. Hope you have a grand time here and thank you for serving!

badapple re edited
by stepwalker87

Comment by spiritualspatula:
I like the contrast on the rifle and apple more on this. You've got a better range of tones, going from 0 to 255, and you can see a lot more detail on the rifle. There are some overly blown areas that are not specular highlights in a few places though. The apple is more apparent, which is good. Overall, I prefer this one, but I wouldn't vote it terribly high either.
The areas where there is still wood grain showing and the paint or whatever that is on the board is really distracting. You likely got hit on things due to your subject matter and the fact that you didn't focus on the challenge idea, which was fruit, as well. The fruit strikes me as an afterthought, not a subject.

all i need
by stepwalker87

Comment by JH:
I think you were stung on your subject matter (and possibly title) as opposed to any technical issue.

Flags, religious symbolism and guns generally don't score well at DPC as they are controversial.

Anyway, you're over in Iraq so there must be loads of interesting things to photograph locally that voters back home wouldn't usually see! :)