Inner City Rush
by smardaz

Comment by wardmac:
I can almost here the sirens.

14.....Beginning of the End of My Little Girl.
by smardaz

Comment by levyj413:
First, this is a great shot, and it deserves every ounce of its score. The expression on her face perfectly captures teen bordeom. Congrats on the your personal best!

Looking at your score, you got a lot of 6s and 7s, which shows the high technical quality. I'm actually surprised you didn't get more votes above that given the spot-on DOF and wonderful facial expression. And her eyes - there's a subject you need to explore more! :)

Now, the rest of my comment is in full knowledge that changing this shot in any way is a matter of personal preference. Scores higher than yours just mean you tweaked it in ways that matched more people's expectations, not necessarily that there's some arbitrary concept of "better" that you need to meet.

I'm guessing it was the lighting that kept you from an even higher score. Even with less-than-perfect lighting, though, you can do some amazing things with reflectors when shooting (just a piece of posterboard works great) and during editing.

I recommend playing around with soft light layers if you use Photoshop just to see how they work and see whether you'd be any happier with it different. Create a blank layer on top of the original, set the blending mode to soft light, and paint pure white over areas you want to lighten using a large-radius, very soft brush. Change the opacity to something low enough that it brightens without looking weird. You can read idnic's great tutorial for more tips.

Then do it again, and paint pure black over areas you want to darken. You'd be astounded at what you can do. See my highest scoring portrait as an example - I link to the original from there.

Even if you don't get anything you like better, it's a great technique to have in your toolkit. Again, congrats!

Message edited by author 2007-12-20 23:43:39.

Inner City Rush
by smardaz

Comment by Tom:
nice Hummer

RX-8 - Zoom Zoom Off The Beaten Path!
by smardaz

Comment by atupdate:
Hello from the Critique Club:

Since I couldn̢۪t vote in this challenge, this is the first time I̢۪ve had a chance to look at your image. My first impression was that this was a nice image of a car and that it would probably score around a 5. What really hurt your score IMHO is that the background in this image does not look like a car ad. Add to the less than flattering background, the car needs more space around it to give the impression that you could buy this car and drive off with it if so desired. I like your post processing and I think it would have worked with the appropriate background. Overall, the lack of a car ad feel to this image made it easy for the voter to give it a 5 and move on, as shown by the voting histogram where almost half of your votes are 5.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions regarding this critique.

Tim

Inner City Rush
by smardaz

Comment by Hanswors:
Nicely captured. The black strips gives it a movie feel. Car chase scene anyone?

Inner City Rush
by smardaz

Comment by Mydee1:
the rush concept is spot on

Inner City Rush
by smardaz

Comment by tpbremer:
I don't think you needed the heavy black frame... I like that the ambulance is the blurred vehicle tho...

Inner City Rush
by smardaz

Comment by hotpasta:
that's good, conveys a sense of urgency and movement

RX-8 - Zoom Zoom Off The Beaten Path!
by smardaz

Comment by MaryO:
Lovely car, and I like the angled composition. I might prefer less DOF so the background is blurred out, and a bit faster shutter so the top of the roof isn't so blindingly white. Tough to expose for a dark car with bright sunlight, though.

14.....Beginning of the End of My Little Girl.
by smardaz

Comment by bucket:
stunning use of DOF!