Glass Candle Holder on a Glass Table
by chalice

Comment by kirsty_mcn:
-trading post-
Whilst there doesn't seem anything "wrong" with this, it doesn't seem to have much punch imho. Theres an awful lot of grey, and I'm not 100% convinced about the focus, although that may be just because of looking through the glass.
I think it would have been a lot stronger with a touch of colour, because the composition does have a nice zen feel to it, and definitely has potential

Eye of God
by chalice

Comment by kirsty_mcn:
Hey, I added this to my favourites straight away even though I didn't have time to comment. This is my favourite of your entries so far, even if not the highest scoring. ITs a beautiful abstract, I love the rich colours and the clarity/sharpness of the patterns in a kinda cubistey way, rather than everything being completely blurred.

Not sure what I could suggest to improve it... possibly (although I know its partly trial and error) it may have been better with more of the yellow bit, which gives it more of an eye/seashell shape rather than the more circular shape.

Definitely underrated, but you can pretty much expect that for an abstract here. You should be very pleased with it nonetheless

Flight of the Bee
by chalice

Comment by kirsty_mcn:
Sorry to be so late with critiques

I think you've succeeded well in capturing the bee with the flower, and enhancing it with b/g bokeh. The colours and the focus on the flower are good. The main problem here for me is that the bee is soft - I'm not sure if that is motion blur or if the bee is outside the plane of focus. I would also prefer the background flowers to be slightly further away (or shallower DOF) to enhance the bokeh.

Also, a slight change in placement could have put the b/g flowers offset against the f/g flower, making the composition a touch less busy.

I would suggest cropping in the righthand side so that the flower is not centralized.

Flowers on a Glass Table
by chalice

Comment by tjbel05:
Absolutely love the reflection idea here.

Flowers on a Glass Table
by chalice

Comment by MTPixels:
Interesting reflection effect here. I may have liked it better if you had rotated the image. 90 degrees tot he right. Nice though. Well done.

Flowers on a Glass Table
by chalice

Comment by KarenNfld:
Nice use of reflection. I feel it is a bit washed out though.

Eye of God
by chalice

Comment by Melethia:
Trading Post comment

First, I apologize, as I missed this when I went through earlier this week to comment - I tend to forget the challenges I didn't enter or vote in. Second, this won't be a totally unbiased comment, since I found out I missed this by reading a comment you made in a forum thread. All that said... I do like this. I'm not generally a fan of abstracts, but I do like a good one now and then, and this is a good one.

With a lot of abstracts, I find myself compelled to figure out what it is - I don't seem to need to do that here. I like it as is, without worrying *what* it is. And contrary to some of your comments, I do like the gold in the corner - adds a spark that lights this up. I'd say this is a very successful experiment!

Eye of God
by chalice

Comment by suemack:
Fantastic! What a beautiful abstract image.

Fireworks over Magic Island
by chalice

Comment by annah:
I'm liking the composition here, especially with that small strip of land at the bottom.

Eye of God
by chalice

Comment by timfythetoo:
Greetings from the Critique Club -

OK - So i gave you a pretty detailed comment from the trading post. And after reading that comment again it pretty much stands the same. I am not quite sure how to go about returning this to the pile to be commented on so what I will do is ask one of my friends to give you a comment on this as a replacement. Let me know if thats not cool and I will see what I have to do to get you back in line.

Tim

(copied just in case CC management looks to see if I did my job)
OK - as an abstract I think this shot works very well. Cool colors and textures. The yellow on the corner though should either be gone or have more of it. I see the little bit of it and want to see more of it. It has a contrasting look and feel to it compared to the rest of the pic. I had absolutley no clue what this was a picture of. But for the challenge it was tough to vote this high IMO. I personally felt that you needed to understand what the subject was to be able to relate to the movement. Spending more time looking at it now makes me feel that I may have scored it a bit harshly, but in the DPC voting world where you spend all of a second or two glimpsing at a shot this didnt grab me or make me want to stay to inspect it further. At voting time I thought it was not interesting or relevent as a motion blur shot. Looking at it deeper now and reading your description I can see what you were shooting for but I still think it would have done much better in an abstract challenge.