Against-the-Flow
by Pangurban

Comment by RianBotes:
Greetings from the Crit club

First off... what a great shot.The angle works wonderful and there is a story in this image. The white swan with the black water makes this excellent for B&W and also in this regard you have chosen wise to go with this processing. You mention difficult light conditions and also the subject here being white would have made even worse.
Risky with the 1/15th and I notice with your outtake movement very noticeable and having things work out on this one with hardly any movement visible is great.... yet where it counts in the water it has movement.. giving further dynamics to the image. Comp works well and placed perfectly.

Unfortunately the image did not score very well in the challenge and understandably so as the main subject here is the swan with the water playing a secondary role. Your title supports the water theme slightly but viewers are less concerned with this. I suspect that's the main reason why this image suffered under the hands of voters

It's advanced editing and I would have cloned out the beard growing from under the birds neck - the twigs. There is a slight hot spot on the back of the swan losing detail in feathers but Im not to concerned about that.
All in all a really nice shot and well done photographically speaking.

Regards
Rian Botes

Water_Outtake
by Pangurban

Comment by Melethia:
This is beautiful!!

Against-the-Flow
by Pangurban

Comment by greslizzz:
A subject so close to burning is very risky in challenges... You never know what kind of monitors people have.
You got a very nice and tricky one... exposure had to be carefully measured.

Cheers and thanks for your comments.

Water_Outtake
by Pangurban

Comment by SaraR:
I think you made the right choice for the challenge, but as a stand alone photo, I think I actually prefer this - it somehow has a sense of ambiguity to it that raises it above its subject. Hard to articulate my thoughts.

Edge of A Broken Glass
by Pangurban

Comment by MadMan2k:
I like the surface used as a backdrop here, it looks very intriguing when slightly out of focus like that. Great detail in the glass edges too.

How Many?
by Pangurban

Comment by SaraR:
Just seen this - a really strong and bold composition, and bags of textural detail, too.

Angle_Outtake
by Pangurban

Comment by markwiley:
I like this one better. I like the textures and many varying tones. But, I tend to like black and white images with some nice texture. So, I may not be representative.

Edge of A Broken Glass
by Pangurban

Comment by tanguera:
Excellent shattered glass shot. Love the bird-like shape and complementary colors

Stately Corner
by Pangurban

Comment by Jules1x:
*Greetings from the critique club*

Compositionally I have mixed feelings about this image. It has a great right angle, which was perfect, and required, for the challenge. But I also found myself wanting to see a bit more of the scene. Overall I think you made a good choice. There is a nice variation in color which drew my eye throughout your whole imageand there are also multiple textures which is interesting.

Technically I think your colors are good, they look very real. There seems to be a but of softness in the upper part of the image. Did you use a tripod? I would guess you did since the ground seems very sharp, but I would have preferred sharpness all the way up the wall. The lighting is nice, no areas with overly dark shadows, although the light is a bit flat. There is not a lot of lighting drama in the image.

As far as simple processing advice, I wonder what adding a bit of contrast would do? Also you could play with lowering exposure a bit, or play with levels and curves then adding a bit of saturation & vibrance to the greens and oranges to get a bit more pop to the image.

Overall, nice entry. It certainly meets the challenge. When comparing your image to those top scorers, those images seem to have a bit more depth and lighting drama.

Thanks for sharing this interesting bit of old building. Keep shooting!
Julee

Against-the-Flow
by Pangurban

Comment by MadMan2k:
Nice - good exposure and tones, simple composition and perfect amount of blur in the water.