front door.jpg
by desertoddity

Comment by patio127:
Lovely sky & mountains- looks like a great place to live !

4th street.jpg
by desertoddity

Comment by suemack:
Beautiful shot!! The sky is perfect.

4th street.jpg
by desertoddity

Comment by smardaz:
love the play of shadows

front door.jpg
by desertoddity

Comment by smardaz:
i like your pp on the sky, very pretty (and welcome to the challenge)

4th street.jpg
by desertoddity

Comment by desertoddity:

Originally posted by riversong: Wow the sky is fantastic! Are those mesquite trees because they are great for bar-b-ques. Very pretty image.

they could be..i'm not great at identifying trees especially in winter. we have a lot of pinon trees (state tree). beyond the fence is the start of the sandia reservation.

4th street.jpg
by desertoddity

Comment by riversong:
Wow the sky is fantastic! Are those mesquite trees because they are great for bar-b-ques. Very pretty image.

front door.jpg
by desertoddity

Comment by riversong:
What a beautiful blue sky! New Mexico is such a pretty state!!

GOTCHA!
by desertoddity

Comment by ErikV:
As promised, some comments:
--Agree with yospiff and andrewt about lighting and DOF issues, so won't repeat those comments. Also agree that composition with regards to placement of Santa and the creature is OK.
--Additional thoughts about DOF: It is very difficult to get good DOF with very small objects, and good DOF is critical for this one. In addition, using an aperture in the 30's (or at least upper 20's) rather than 7.1 would have helped some. Most of the higher ranked entries in this challenge required and achieved good DOF, and did this by photographing large things.
--IMHO, I don't see enough of a connection between Santa and the creature. Had you picked something more closely connected to Santa or Christmas to attack him (a UPS delivery truck running him over is the first thing that comes to mind), you would have had a better "story" so to speak. But yospiff thought the idea was OK, so I may be wrong here.
--Hope this helps.

moon over the bosque
by desertoddity

Comment by Yo_Spiff:
I didn't vote on the challenge this was in, but it's really nice. Nice crisp colors. this is one of those shots that could have benefited from more resolution allowed in a challenge.

GOTCHA!
by desertoddity

Comment by Yo_Spiff:
Looks like this is one I did not get around to voting on. Feedback, as promised:

Hmmm... (puts on thinking cap):

I like the idea you put together here. What is that creature? Looks like it may be a metal sculpture.

I like the composition and the subtle brown shading in the background. The critter attacking Santa is out of focus and hidden in shadows too much, while there is too much brightness on the Santa figure. An additional light on the critter may have helped some. You had a fairly narrow aperture, so my only suggestion for the DOF would have been to back off a little, perhaps using a different lens would have helped it. I suspect the critter is fairly far away and getting it all in focus would have been a trick.

In a nutshell, I think the DOF and the lighting is what did this one in with the voting.