Stare into the light
by pellemannen

Comment by latino_heat:
great pic!!

Stare into the light
by pellemannen

Comment by popdeepop:
Interesting with the life form. Looks like you tried to just get an impression of it. The other subject is nice but will it be in the 'after'?

Stare into the light
by pellemannen

Comment by hotpasta:
excellent shot

Tulip
by pellemannen

Comment 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
This image has such beautiful luminosity that it positively glows. It carries much more punch that the typical duotone. The focus is perfect on the near petal, and falls off gently toward the back of the flower, creating a nicely three dimensional feel. The lighting is wonderful, IMO, though a few small areas do appear to have blown out. I don't think this detracts, however. It leaves one with a sense of intense lighting that was well controlled. Your photo information indicates that it was a four second exposure at f5.6. Really? Must have been very dimly lit. The black background with the ray of light arching over the flower is exquisite. Much more effective than a flat black background. Whatever your technique, bravo on the result. I'm viewing (and critiquing) this image on a very bright iMac LCD. I just looked at your image on a traditional CRT and it's much darker and less vibrant on that monitor. I just can't express how beautiful it looks with the added brightness of the LCD screen. This gives me pause as I consider my own submissions, as well as my commenting on others' work. I bet you could have tweaked the brightness/exposure of this image up a bit and had it pop equally as well on CRTs.

COMPOSITION
Because it is an image that is so well done technically, the composition works. I don't know what is causing that arc of illumination over the flower, but I think it might have been even stronger had the flower been offset to the right, allowing the arc of light to frame it a bit. As shot, though, it's quite stunning.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT
Can you tell I like your shot?? It's beautifully simple and elegant, understated but strong. As a study, I can scarcely imagine how to make it stronger. It really works for me.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Your comments were generally very positive and people seemed to react to the beautiful lighting the same way I did. I'm a little disappointed that it only scored 5.77. Just based on the technical merit and over appeal, I would have guessed nearer to 6.0 and maybe even a smidge over. Still, it ranked at the 83rd%ile over all, not bad for a big challenge with lots of strong entries. Kudos to you. You made me pause and appreciate a wonderful work of art.

Making Justice
by pellemannen

Comment by e301:
from the hay-lost of the Critique Club

It's an interesting approach to the challenge, I think. It's very rare for a slightly off-the-wall angle to thing to be at al understood, let alone appreciated here (in fact, it's entirely possible to make an interesting experience out of a whole process of gentle piss-taking of the challenge theme thing). But here, I sense, is a genuine appreciation of the ideas of the virtues, and an interesting illustraction of those ideas in action - the concentration on this small balancing act between the two kids is fantastic, and the distortion of features in the glasses just adds extra emphasis to the whole idea. Candid, set-up, whatever, and who cares? I hope it's a proper grabbing-of-the-moment photograph - but whatever, it works.

Now, as to what doesn't work. You just need to get a handle on the whole processing thing. Believe me, if you can enter this shot for one of these challenges, you know what the difficult bit of photography is about - the moment, the capture of the important thing as it is presented to you - but boy, you really need, I would say, to get a hold of what the idea of presenation in photography is about. This looks straight out of the camera - and never forget, that what comes straight out of your camera is designed to amke people's holiday photographs look as good as possible. Put this in black and white, do a careful adjustment with levels, so that you have as wide a range of tones as you can find in this scene, and you'd have so much more high-scoring a photograph - for dpc, you must always present children photographs as a piece of art, at the very least.

Looking through your stuff here at dpc, I'd say you have some potential as a photographer; I think it's worth remembering a salient point about any endeavour: 'if it was easy, then everyone would be doing it'.

Tulip
by pellemannen

Comment by stef57:
i really like the back lighting.... nice touch

Tulip
by pellemannen

Comment by graphicfunk:
A very nice graceful subject. I would considered just a bit softer lighting. The color is pleasant. 6

Tulip
by pellemannen

Comment by SandyP:
How pretty! Wonderful lighting, and such crisp, clean focus. Great tones. And I love tulips!

Tulip
by pellemannen

Comment by Chuck the Writer:
Love the delicate veining visible in the petals...

Tulip
by pellemannen

Comment by persimon:
Beautiful tones and textures. The lighting you used really mde the textures stand out.