Cooper River Marina
by mgarsteck

Comment by ThingFish:
Striking mishmash of masts and rigging with dock pilings in between. Very nice b&w conversion with excellent contrast and detail.

Cooper River Marina
by mgarsteck

Comment by Paul:
OK, I'm going through the Free Study submissions, purposefully finding those images I think are shot with a less conventional eye - this is one of those images! Thanks for offering something that isn't just DPC friendly eye-candy (though of course there's nothing wrong with eye-candy):

Positives: Wow, what a busy image! Of course the busyness IS the image, this creates an abstract pattern which effectively creates an overlay effect onto the scene making this shot more than the sum of its parts. You were quite right to offer this in monochrome and your manipulation of the contrast emphasises the oh-so-important vertical lines in this shot. Your placement of the boat towards the left side of the image is critical to the shot - to borrow a boating metaphor from your image, it anchors the shot. It is that boat the eye latches onto and it acts as a primer to the rest of the virtually encoded image, allowing the brain to make sense of the rest by offering the vital context of the scene.

Critical stuff: I'm not sure I have any; I do note that there is very little that is actually white in the image and I wonder how a tweak in levels might look, but then it would be a different image and this one is just fine.

Overall: An image that keeps the eye and brain busy and one which manages to almost create an impressionist image from an 'ordinary' scene. Great job.

Cooper River Marina
by mgarsteck

Comment by PennyStreet:
Nicely done b/w and I really like the image.

Cooper River Marina
by mgarsteck

Comment by Leo:
Like the lines lines lines. Like the choice to go B&W. Feels abstract to me.

Cooper River Marina
by mgarsteck

Comment by SaraR:
Interesting, but too cluttered for my tatses - my brain balks at trying to absorb so much visual information, and struggles to make sense of it.

Cooper River Marina
by mgarsteck

Comment by bmartuch:
I love all of the vertical lines. B&W works very well.

Oil Wrangler
by mgarsteck

Comment by Yo_Spiff:
This is a tough one to decide on. It's a well done portrait, but I have to decide if the challenge was to actually have oil in the picture or to simply illustrate something related to oil. I'm afraid I'm on the fence with this and I'll have to give it a neutral 5.

Oil Wrangler
by mgarsteck

Comment by LalliSig:
I dunno, my mother always told me that the first rule of portraits is to always keep the eyes in focus and you know what they say, mothers are always right!

Its Not Smoke, Its not what you think, Its never been seen on DPC
by mgarsteck

Comment by BeeCee:
I think it would look cool rotated 90 degrees and printed on a scroll :)

Its Not Smoke, Its not what you think, Its never been seen on DPC
by mgarsteck

Comment by skewsme:
title doth protest, but still very engaging image