s h e l l s
by Ja-9

Comment by Jules1x:
*Greetings from the Critique Club*

Beautiful shot, one of my favorites in the challenge with that full image of vibrant yellow and wonderful repeating pattern of 'shells'. Lighting is wonderful, I love the bits of shadow in the central part of the flower.

You definitely met the challenge, and congrats on a great score. I do not see any negative aspects to your image. As for differences between yours and those that scored a bit better - I'm not sure. There is drama in all, but yours has nice drama too. The other flower shot had less shadows, and it's shadow had more of a yellow color than brown. But the brown in your shot coordinates nicely with the yellow I think.

So nicely done and congrats again on a great finish! Keep up the great work.
Julee

s w i r l s
by Ja-9

Comment by markwiley:
I should have known this beauty was yours. It was a ribbon contender in my ranking.

s w i r l s
by Ja-9

Comment by jomari:
Beautiful!

E P C O T
by Ja-9

Comment by MadMan2k:
What a cool structure! Nicely composed with the silhouetted tree to give some scale, and good amount of negative space to give it room to breathe.

s w i r l s
by Ja-9

Comment by tvsometime:
Good take on the classic rose for the purpose.

s w i r l s
by Ja-9

Comment by illini75:
Beautiful

s w i r l s
by Ja-9

Comment by markwiley:
I find macros much harder than they look. This one grabs your attention.

s e c r e t s • o f • t h e • s e a
by Ja-9

Comment by Garry:
Nice detail, but find I'm rather burnt out on the subject having seen it previously. Also, some artifacting/sloppy masking on the right hand side I find to be very distracting.

the sea is calling
by Ja-9

Comment by Garry:
Hi Janine, greetings from the Critique Club :)

With a placing of 14 out of 89, it's clear this image resonated well with the viewer, especially considering you averaged more 7's than 5's.

For the positives, I really like the centered composition and the phenomenal detail. The reflection in the water is particularly beautiful too. However, where it falls short, in my view, is the processing. While I understand that HDR and HDR-like effects are very popular with the DPC crowd, I feel it is often over-done, as is the case here. The tonemapping has been pushed a little too far for me, to such a degree that the subject no longer appears natural. The image needs more shadows and contrast to make it believable. The other things with the processing is that the area to the immediate right of the pier (ie. water and sky) appear darker and "browner" than the the main body. Either this is a masking issue, or an issue with the processing, but the two parts of the image don't look like they belong together. Lastly, I found that the whole image appears to be sloping badly to the left (I can tell you did straighten the horizon, but the angle of the incoming wave gives the tilted effect..not much you could do about that!).

I know it appears I am being overly critical (which I probably am), but I do so in an effort to be as honest with my critique as possible and to let you know what I was feeling when I evaluated the image.

If you have any questions/comments about my critique, please feel free to PM me!

Kind regards,
Garry

s e c r e t s • o f • t h e • s e a
by Ja-9

Comment by MadMan2k:
This looks familiar...