Evening at the Gateby
swallaceComment by Aghris: Greetings from the Critique Club
First impression and overall look:
First things that came to mind was: nice colors. Maybe a tad oversaturated, but apparently that does well on DPC. Second thing that came to mind was: hey! this is actually a picture of a shadow! Well done. Then came the rest. I like the late or early lighting. It does give that romantic feel that you were going for. I like the light on the leaves on the top. It frames the picture well. What I would have cropped out is the tree on the left and the bush on the right. And since this is an advanced editing challenge, I would also have cloned out the dirt mound at the back. It's distracting and doesn't add to the image.
Technical and post processing:
OptikVerve did a good job. The colors are indeed very romantic, and there is a softness in the image that many will find pleasing. The fence is a bit dark. Maybe a soft fill-in flash could have brought back some detail. Personally I might have tried a layer mask to blur the trees in the a bit more.
Meeting the challenge:
Yes it does. There is a pretty shadow, which is also the main focus of the image.
How to raise your score:
A neater enviroment could have helped you, although I realise that it would be hard to grow some grass quickly on the trodden down path. A better crop could have given you some extra decimals, but in the end I think the picture is just not interesting enough to score high with the DPC voters.
Photographer found comment helpful.
