The Poole
by Pangurban

Comment by jim29028:
are you coloring this? if so nice job - for me this image isn't dynamic and while I keep looking at the pencil the image itself doesn't hold my attention.

Fern Furled
by Pangurban

Comment by WonderDude:
That's very weird. The image seems just a bit too noisy. But nice composition.

The Poole
by Pangurban

Comment by gipper11:
I like the depth of field and the color scheme.

The Poole
by Pangurban

Comment by Tiny:
Good to see you are keeping within the lines.

Fern Furled
by Pangurban

Comment by Cyrilda:
Awesome shot.

Fern Furled
by Pangurban

Comment by bmartuch:
I like the way this creates a diagonal.

Herb Seller
by Pangurban

Comment by Lydia:
I'm not fond of the flash on this image. I like your composition (although taking a bit off the top would make it much more intimate) and her beautiful smile... but... it's ruined by the flash, in my opinion.

Jaipur Juliet
by Pangurban

Comment by Lydia:
Wow! What a composition! Wonderful!

The pop of red of the girl's clothing is magnificent among the palette of yellows and browns. In my opinion, it makes the whole image.

I love the diagonal of the whole of it and the vertical breaks in it.

The only thing I can see that made your image not score higher is the focus. There is nothing in focus and I really wait for the girl to come into sharp focus to make this image... SOAR.

It might be the rule constraints that made her not in focus as shown here, if she is in focus in the original. If so, perhaps try Save For Web to get more details in focus while staying within the rules.

In all, this is a beautiful image that you should be proud of, Ellie!

Fire In Its Belly
by Pangurban

Comment by Jules1x:
Greetings from the Critique Club.

First thoughts - this definitely met the challenge. Hot air balloons always make for a good subject imho, and nice work catching the flame. That flame definitely added a bit of something special. The colors seem realistic, and not overly saturated. Nothing wrong with the light, although nothing particularly special about it either. (Darn the morning not having been a nice pink sky morning huh?)

For me, I suspect I might have enjoyed the shot either with more of the scene or isolated in the sky. The bit of trees just did not add much to the overall feeling about the image. Had the green coordinated with a color in the balloon, I might have felt differently but as it stands the green of the trees just seemed to pull my attention away a bit from the balloon and cluttered up the scene a bit without giving me feeling for what the surrounding area was like.

All in all I feel like this was a solid entry for the challenge, just maybe not as compositionally as strong as some of the higher scoring images in the challenge.

Hermitage
by Pangurban

Comment by snaffles:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Heh, well I almost guessed straight off the bat what this was, my first guess was some sort of handmade Christmas ornament :-) I had hermit crabs as pets when I was a kid. (Not very cuddly, but fun to watch.) Anyway, a good image that meets the challenge requirements, it's both a thought-out macro and the pattern of the shell definitely give that abstract quality.

Like you said, the devil is in the hotspots from your light sources. It looks like 2-3 directional lights aimed at the shell; I also used to use floods simply because I had nothing else to use. If you're stuck with only an on-camera flash, wrapping it up in many layers of small bubblewrap could have helped to diffuse the light so it wouldn't have given that *on-camera flash* look.

Otherwise a fine image, and everyone knows that reflective surfaces are the very devil to shoot. But there are ways to do it, I picked up a book called Light: Science and Magic which is a terrific book to help you learn the basics of lighting.

Hope this helps!

Susan