Christmas Time Is Here
by jenarom

Comment by giraldo:
This photo is almost crrraap! =)

Light Speed
by jenarom

Comment by Yomi:
"Critique Club Comment"

COMPOSITION- Very great idea for the motion challenge. You cropped the shot very well for the theme of you picture. Creative idea with the light. Maybe you could have added just a little more lights to fill the rest of the space. Other than that I think it's perfect.

BACKGROUND- The lights are perfect for the background. Just a little more to fill the rest of the space.

CAMERA WORK- DOF and shutter speed are great. You hit it great.

DIGITAL PROCESSING- I don't know if it's just a light reflection or little "jaggies" just make sure you save it as close to 150K to keep it as clean as possible. Your levels and colors are great.

MY OPINION- I was lucky to get assigned this shot. I think this should have won. I love it. I'm a big Star Wars fan too. Very great job.

Christmas Time Is Here
by jenarom

Comment by emagen:
great picture! you should have scored better
Merry XMass

Light Speed
by jenarom

Comment by jenarom:
Thanks everyone for your comments. I really love Star Wars, and this is my 2nd Star Wars picture in dpchallenge. I actually have some other scifi pictures here. I had a lot of fun creating the effect of light speed. I punched more than a hundred holes on a black foam board, and put xmas lights in them. The trouble I had was lighting the TIE Fighter. Because I don't have proper lighting, I used two small flashlights that cast a yellow light, so I had to correct the color in Photoshop. Another problem is that my digital camera has no manual control for the shutter speed. I set the timer in the camera which was placed on a tripod, and at the time of the firing of the camera, I quickly moved the board so that I could get the lines of light, similar to the effects in the movies (ha! I wish!). Thanks again to everyone.

Christmas Time Is Here
by jenarom

Comment by jenarom:
Thanks everyone for your comments. Now to explain a little on how I got the effect for the ball and the white background: I used the Levels tool in Photoshop to get that pure white background. I have to use this tool, because I don't have proper lighting. I used normal light bulbs for this picture, so those caused the background to have a horrible dirty yellow color, and it also turned my xmas red ball into an orange ball. What I did like is that after I used the Levels tool to get the white color, the ball seemed a little bit two dimensional, so the picture now looked like a xmas card. After that, I only had to crop the picture and applied some sharpening. Thanks for you compliments and also the tips for how to improve my picture, specially about the out of focus branch.

Christmas Time Is Here
by jenarom

Comment by Sonifo:
I think this should have taken 1st place. This is so awesome. My favorite.

Christmas Time Is Here
by jenarom

Comment by Gotcha:
It's only missing the words..... Nice Work 7 - Gotcha

Christmas Time Is Here
by jenarom

Comment by David Ey:
looks like a Christmas card..very pretty and profesional

Light Speed
by jenarom

Comment by stephan:
Very funny! I'm a big Star Wars fan so you get an extra point from me ;-) You did a good job aligning the TIE fighter exactly to the "laser" strokes of light. I don't like the tight crop especially in the lower half of the photo. -stephan

Light Speed
by jenarom

Comment by Turbotech:
Hey I think we have a Geroge Lucas in the crowd.