He Singled Himself Out
by seebrown

Comment by yakatme:
He sure did single himself out, so maybe he should be scored instead of the photographer. But then again, he also singled himself by not being in a crowd instead of following the details of the challenge either: "Use minimal depth-of-field to your advantage to help isolate your subject".

My comments are the culmination of seeing so many photos in which the photographer seemed to cave in to the difficulties of meeting the details associated with the challenge. I finally caved in and commented while viewing your entry, but the gist of my comments could be applied to the majority of entries.

One thing that you definitely achieved was creativity. Outside of the challenge details, I like this shot. I know it is difficult to achieve, but I would like to see less light in the background and more light on the cowboy's face.

He Singled Himself Out
by seebrown

Comment by whiteroom:
so funny!

He Singled Himself Out
by seebrown

Comment by kdkaboom:
i love naked cowboy
and on the days he ain't there
it's usually spidey man!

He Singled Himself Out
by seebrown

Comment by srugolo:
WOW... Where's the flash? It'd have been great!

He Singled Himself Out
by seebrown

Comment by KiwiShotz:
The challenge asked for a person to be singled out in a crowd using shallow depth of field. Ooops both the crowd and the shallow DOF ran away ... I'm not surprised - yuk!

He Singled Himself Out
by seebrown

Comment by hotpasta:
great perspective, the face looks a little dark...love your choice of lens

He Singled Himself Out
by seebrown

Comment by pix-are:
Wow, just scary is all i can say!!! lol. 6

PawnOfTheWorld
by seebrown

Comment by KiwiShotz:
::: Critique Club :::
Having not entered Username, it's great to be doing a critique in it. One thing you learn is that people have some very weird usernames - the mind boggles.

Great fun to do a critique on your image but it is more difficult if you don't give us detailed information in your photographers comments. When we do a critique, we go past just the photographic result or post processing, that's what voters comments do. The critique looks at what you were trying to achieve, how you wanted it to look and what issues you had in getting the image captured and ready for voting.

First Impression - the most important one:
Interesting, I instantly liked it. It does what it is supposed to do - stop you from passing on, it engages you to look further into the image = first base.

Composition:
I'm really confuzzled here because it looks fine but hasn't scored well and something about it just doesn't gel. I suspect that composition rather than any other factors is where it didn't grab hearts so lets look at that.

Part of the difficulty is for the viewer to decide what the Point Of Interest is. Was it your intention that point to be the pawn, the centre of Africa or the whole lit area as a unity? Once decided, that area will have the most impact on a thirds intersection.

One of the other useful things to note is that the eye enters bottom-left and exits top-right. Ignoring the type reversal, I wonder what impact change mirroring the image would have.

Is there too much neutral black space below the globe? I'm really not sure, but it would be fun to run some test prints and get family/friends to choose a favourite.

Subject:
Bang on challenge, interesting, very differnet, creative and pushing the boundaries. In effect, good choice.

Technical (Colour, focus, and light):
10/10 for the lighting. You've really worked hard at this, it shows and it works. The complete blackout all around africa is terrific as it gives the drama and imact needed to be noticed in this tough environment. Well done.

To grow its vote?:
If you do try some composition variations, let me know what worked best.

Summary:
A really good image, well conceived but not well received. I'm probably as mystified as you as to why not and would be really interested in any tests you do.

Brett

Wada Basin Fractal
by seebrown

Comment by macrothing:

Originally posted by seebrown: .... all of those "shots" are computer generated......

Oh, then 'oops' re my comments. A couple of them sure seemed like shots though.

Originally posted by seebrown: ...I think my shot is better than the shot in Scientific American 2002 Thanks for taking interest in fractals ...

Thank you for the information and - yes you might be right about the Scientific American 2002 cover shot.

Wada Basin Fractal
by seebrown

Comment by seebrown:
just a note on that site I posted earlier .... all of those "shots" are computer generated. I would have loved to take a shot with such clarity but without very perfect and very large spheres I think those would be imposible. Here are a couple of sites where fractals were shot with a physical camera ..

Wada Basin Fractals (Photo's) Magazine cover

Note that the sphere's used in the above site are about 3 feet in diameter.

This site shows you exactly what I did to get the shots (I think my shot is better than his though!)

Wada basin fractal photo setup

For that matter I think my shot is better than the shot in Scientific American 2002

Thanks for taking interest in fractals ...