toss.jpg
by cryingdragon

Comment by rinac:
Really nice Mike. I likey lots and may give it a try myself :)

Spokane Panorama
by cryingdragon

Comment by violinist123:
You need to adjust levels (or curves) in each photo so that the contrast matches in each one. It's not as much of a pain in the rear as it sounds since (at least in photoshop) you can do it to each photo while having the entire panorama displayed.

Looks real nice.

All the way up..and reverse
by cryingdragon

Comment by cerebis:
like the the all the way up part, but not the reverse. I assume the image wasn't as interesting as you had hoped and thats why you reversed it. I still would have liked to see the original though.

All the way up..and reverse
by cryingdragon

Comment by NoellaSue:
Is too harsh looking.

All the way up..and reverse
by cryingdragon

Comment by starrlite:
just a little too much i think

Candlelight Katana
by cryingdragon

Comment by LucidLotus:
Interesting contrasts in shapes and colors. I don't think I understand the significance or meaning behind the choices but it is different. I like the nice line the katana makes and the way the white candle really pops against the black background. Unfortuantely, all of the focus seems to be on the hilt circle thingie and since both the katana AND the candle are forefront, the focus should encompass both items better IMO. There is a bit of a flatness to the image as well, I'm not sure if alternate lighting would help by adding some sort of depth or not (with the black background adding shadows wouldn't really work) as it looks now it just looks like a sword and candle were put down and photographed, no real sense of as to why they were paired. But that could just be my weird way of looking at things. Regardless, I gave a 5.

Candlelight Katana
by cryingdragon

Comment by sherpet:
Unusual image, but it works for me...

Candlelight Katana
by cryingdragon

Comment by Jaded_Housewife:
I can't actually tell what this is. is that a sword? i know the thing on the bottom is a candle. It would also help the zen feel i think if the flame werent disturbed. if it were standing straight up then it would help the calm feel. Hope that helps.

Games
by cryingdragon

Comment by atupdate:
Another response from your forum post. You've already heard about the contrast issue so I thought I would add one more item as food for thought. The way you stacked the chips gives this image a lot of potential for patterns if cropped differently. As is, the image is all about symmetry, which is slightly off. If you crop tightly around the dice (About a dice width to the right and left of the end dice) and intersect the chips with the top and bottom borders of the image, the dice become the focal point of the image but the pattern from the chips add a lot of eye appeal. I often play around with cropping to see how much different looks I can get from an image.

Frosty's rarely seen little brother
by cryingdragon

Comment by kteach:
You posted in the forums asking for comments to help you improve, so here goes...

As most commenters noted, the shot is out of focus, which is it's biggest downfall. You did attempt to give it a background of some sort, which is a good start, but the poor lighting also didn't help your cause. Perhaps finding a white balance setting on the camera would help to get rid of the yellowish cast to the picture. And in reading your comments, you said that you did this last minute just to get it in. Usually, I'd say that is one of the things that dooms a photo in the challenges. Not giving yourself enough time to properly set up, shoot and process a shot and putting it in a contest with hundreds of other photos which people have taken the time to work through is setting it up for failure in most cases. Better to just sit out a challenge than to enter something that you're not happy with or proud of.

Hope something in this comment was helpful to you... and good luck in future challenges!