Dead Of Winterby
jmsetzlerComment by stephan: Hello John, greetings from the Critique Club (I guess you heard about it ;-))
Composition:
A bit uneasy. There are lotss of details to see. Outdoor photos can be very cluttered sometimes but you did a good job to handle it. There are three elements: the tombstones, the house and the tree. The house gets a bit more attention because of the lighting but generally all three elements seem to play an equal role. So your composition was used well to capture the overall mood of the while scene.
My personal preference is that I like simple photos more and I think the photo would still look good without either the tree or the house. But I'm unsure if it would look better, because house and tree balance each other well.
Two "mergers" distract a little bit. First, the tree does not contrast very much against the trees in the background. The colour tones are the same and because if the wide DOF both have the same level of detail. Second there are two tombstones which merge because they're both black and there is no edge.
Lighting:
I like the infrared lighting and the high contrast very much. It's very stange and interesting. Black and white suits the overall theme.
Unfortunately the lighting looks a bit too sunny and happy, which does not fit to the theme "dead of winter". The blown out wall of the house, the high contrast and the bright grass makes you think it's sunny and you expect shadows. But there are none (at least I can't see them) and this makes you think it's (a hot summer) noon.
What I like most in this photo is the gradient in the sky. It's has such an awesome eerie feeling! Very moody and dark. This really "makes" the photo in my opinion.
Focus:
I like the DOF. Good decision to use the narrow aperture and accept the resulting slow shutter speed. The focus is great especially for such a slow shutter speed.
Postprocessing:
I removed the border in my image editor and I like it better without it. It "constricts" (warning: looked word up in dictionary, hope it fits) the photo and without it the photo is more "open" which fits much more to an outdoor landscape photo. But I'm no broder-expert and very rarely like borders.
Art:
Not a typical landscape photo (which is a plus!), but in my opinion you met the challenge topic. Creative use of infrared lighting. It transports an interesting mood and has an appealing strangeness. The title fits although the "winter" part is not very visible (as explained above).
Ok, that's it. I hope I was able to express my thoughts about your photo correctly (which is a bit difficult sometimes, especially because English is not my native language). If you have questions, please don't hesitate to email me.
Stephan
Message edited by author 2003-01-26 14:22:59. 
