Winter Calmby
sgauriaComment by strangeghost: Greetings from the Critique Club
by strangeghost
The first three parts of this critique are written based purely on examination of your photo. "Final thoughts" is written after reviewing your score, photographer's comments, and voter comments.
TECHNIQUE
A beautifully clear and contrasty photo. Your duotone of predominantly gray tones works well with the cloudy, foggy appearance of the sky and mountain tops. Nice clarity and sharpness throughout. Focus is spot on. Very nice job of keeping the details in the snow - not an easy job in a photo with so may dark areas as well. Technically a superb job of handling a wide range of brightness. Too bad it was a basic editing challenge. Otherwise, I bet you'd have liked to bring out a bit more drama in the sky?
COMPOSITION
I like the portrait crop and I love the inclusion of the tree branch in the water on the right. It adds just the right touch of foreground interest, and contributes to the moody loneliness otherwise radiated in the photo.
EMOTIONAL IMPACT
As suggested by my comments above, I really like the feel of this photo. It conveys a sense of isolation and solemnity, as well as majesty. And, also as mentioned above, the single tree branch disappearing into the water really adds an element of punctuation to the shot. Your title completes the pictures, a perfect fit.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I'll start off by observing that you should always include a photographer's comment, especially when you're requesting a critique. In addition to not doing that, you provided no technical details (shutter, aperture, ISO). Those elements make it much easier for a CC critique to relate specific comments to your technique.
Those who bothered to comment obviously like it. So, why didn't it score higher? A 5.7 is a perfectly respectable score, above average (79th %ile for the challenge), but I bet you were disappointed. A technically excellent, well composed, but only 5.7? Most likely, it just got lost in a huge challenge, with lots of outstanding entries.
Photographer found comment helpful.