Geoff & Doreen
by MichaelC

Comment by GolferDDS:
Love this candid shot. Lots of Character.

Geoff & Doreen
by MichaelC

Comment by Paul:
I'm going through the entries, stopping at those images I feel have had the benefit of an unconventional eye and dwelling a little longer to try to see and appreciate what you saw. This is one of those images.

Positives: What a superb portrait of Geoff this is and what a superb capture of a relationship too. This is a double edged sword (see critical stuff) but the technicals of Geoff's portrait are completely stand out. The image overall is also witty and human - I really like that.

Critical stuff: Your fill lighting on Geoff is fabulous, but Doreen is left lacking - although she's in the background, she's integral to your story and could perhaps do with a bit of pop. The image is highly contrived - your subjects appear too posed but... (see below)

Overall: This IS a highly successful image - sure I've complained a little above but overall, I find I don't care about all that - the image has such immediacy and is so forthcoming that I think it really, really works. It's a little cliched in its poses but has bags of quirk to carry it through. An odd choice for a fav for me, but I just can't help myself.

Geoff & Doreen
by MichaelC

Comment by Tiny:
That's just great,love the light/processing as well as the subject matter.Top ten.

Geoff & Doreen
by MichaelC

Comment by MargaretNet:
The best of this free study. How did you get DOF?

Geoff & Doreen
by MichaelC

Comment by Bear_Music:
Killer good shot. Stopped me in my tracks. Portraits rarely do. 10

She's coming home
by MichaelC

Comment by nam:
Congratulations on the top ten. Terrific light, tones and expression.

She's coming home
by MichaelC

Comment by JamesDowning:
This is a truly great portrait. Perfect focus, interesting composition, and a somewhat unplanned and unposed look to it. Really wonderful.

Connections
by MichaelC

Comment by JamesDowning:
Greetings from the Critique Club,

A solid finish here for a decent image. Clarity and focus is good, but the doubling of the filters probably led to some of the random light diffraction that is so evident here. I do think this shot is an improved composition over your personal best shot, which appears to be the same bridge.

Compositionally, I would try showing more of the bridge, vertically, next time. I feel like I am robbed slightly of this wonderful view. I think this same image with a nearly square crop could have been stronger. Intersecting the bridge's top beam with the top corner of the image could have added some interesting leading lines. This could be done by having a slightly wider angle lens, and maybe cropping in slightly on the left, but not too much.

Technically, the light diffraction is very distracting to me. I am curious why you chose to use two ND filters, when you could have used a lower ISO and maybe a smaller aperture and gotten a very similar effect, likely without as much light diffraction. If you really wanted to darken the upper portion of the image, and since you have a 30 second exposure, you can experiment with covering the top half of the lens with a sheet of black paper for a portion of the exposure and get very similar effect to the ND grad.

Overall, a very nice image, but not very creative to me, and a bit technically off. It doesn't push the bounds and make me say WOW. Honestly, I'm amazed that it got the score that it did, but I guess it's a testament to DPC's love for the smooth water effect. I hope this doesn't come across too harsh. I can see you've been around here for quite a while, so I hope you've got some good thick skin. Just trying to offer some alternate views.

Food for thought.

James Downing

She's coming home
by MichaelC

Comment by Tiny:
Congrats, still higher in my view.

She's coming home
by MichaelC

Comment by tanguera:
Congrats on the ttt!