No
by Node

Comment by gloda:
As your title suggests, the important element of this picture is the word NO. However, leaving parts of the words that follow the NO makes me wanna NO...eh know, sorry, what they mean. You should have taken a frontal shot of the sign and cropped away the other words *completely*. Same remark for "...gh city".

Read my mind!
by Node

Comment by Gordon:
Great initial impact - the dog, the eyes. The shallow DoF and fall-off to the background also add to this effect of being 'in your face' Very effective. However, the left side of the shot just doesn't work for me, with the square and pencil - they lead my eye out of the scene - particularly the bright yellow and reds in the pencil and the line shape they form pointing away from the subject and off the page to the left.

This can be helped a whole lot by cropping the shot square, around the dog. The right hand two thirds of the image are strong enough and with a centered crop the dog is the real focus of the shot.

Now following convention, you should use rule of thirds, right ? Well the reason is that if you have a subject bang in the center of the frame it takes all the attention, is very arresting, static and generally dominates the composition. In this case - that is what is happening anyway. If you compose it in a square frame by cropping the left third - you'll get an even stronger, more arresting scene. The elements in it build to that effect, the composition will enhance that and I think it'll be stronger all around.

After doing that, you are still left with the piece of wood jutting in from the left - which does still clutter it a bit, but I think this crop would make for a much stronger image - try it and see how you like it! Then maybe try and re-create this sort of image, with just the green grass background and without the other elements - try the off center and very centered/ square compositions with those as well and see which you prefer.

No
by Node

Comment by Skip:
interesting take on the challenge. i think your image would have been stronger if you had gone on and cropped out the top down to just below the sign edge--that stuff adds nothing. this really looks like a fun place to visit, and i'm sure the city council will be approaching you to for permission to reprint this in all the tourist literature . good luck, 6 from me.

No
by Node

Comment by Discraft:
You could've crop the top of the photo. but thats my opinion.

No
by Node

Comment by Bolti:
what is it?

No
by Node

Comment by vontom:
If you really wanted the focus on the "no" that line should have been centered. As it stands, I would like to see more of the sign.

Sea breeze
by Node

Comment by Gracious:
Classic tropical scene.

Remnants of the storm
by Node

Comment by Gordon:
Another shot with great initial impact. The colours and patterns are really strong and the leading lines give a lot of visual interest. Only issues I have are the high contrast, out of focus areas in the upper left and lower right, that draw my eyes. The yellow line leads off to the background, walking me through the image, but I get lost in the rear 'V' shape without really anywhere to go. This is a subject with a lot of potential.

The soft foreground and background, with only the midground in sharp focus confuses my eye a little too - I start in the out of focus region, move through the sharpness and back to out of focus again - I think I'd prefer it if it was sharp at one end or the other and lead off to either sharpness or an out of focus area. This would probably require manual focus setting on your camera, rather than using one of the AF points. You could focus and recompose but that often isn't the best way to achieve something like that. For this - I'd probably try and have the very tip of the yellow line in sharpest focus.

Also worth checking the edges again - particularly for the lighter red/ orange regions creeping in at the bottom - They could probably have been cropped out in this case.

Soup kitchen volunteers
by Node

Comment by Gordon:
Initial impact: I like how you've abstracted this to the hands giving and getting only. Good repeating patterns in the hands and soup pans too, as well as the trays give a strong graphic element to this image.

The background might have been managed better, somehow removing or reducing the impact of the red chairs - if possible a more 'overhead' view would have assisted with this. The lighting seems a bit rough and ready - on camera flash ? It has left you with some quite harsh blown areas on the foreground sandwich and the shadows in the background.

In general, I think good seeing and a bit of work on the lighting and more attention to the background would make this a really strong image.

Sea breeze
by Node

Comment by Juniper366:
Cool shadow