Colors Of The Nightby
origoComment by e301: Your critique club moment ... Hi Joe
Nice shooting - really like the combinations of colour temperatures from the different types of lighting. My first reaction, especially given this is an 8 second exposure, is to wish you'd either had the patience to wait for no cars, or to wait for a moment with more - just those few light trails seems rather arbitrary to me.
As someone else has observed, there seems to have been some minor camera shake going on, just enough to blur everything very slightly, and just enough to distract from the image.
The composition is excellent though - the combination of shapes and colours and the positions of the lights work together wonderfully. The graininess, pleasantly un-excessive, really helps the urban quality of it too.
Obviously I don't know what else you tried, but had it been me I think I'd have had a go at a slightly shorter exposure, or perhaps I would have desaturated it all a little - it has the appearance of having had the colours brought out too much, causing some of the detail in some areas to disappear; or perhaps it's more processed than that - those rear-light trails are really too pink to be real.
Good shot, and 23rd is not a poor result. As I'm sure you'll find, the vast majority of winners here are very clean, very technical shots - with this kind of mood you'll need an exceptional capture to score much higher.
Ed
