Aspyre
by Trinilos

Comment by MinsoPhoto:
Greetings from the Critique Club

First Impressions:

Is that there is really a bit too much going on in the shot.

Technical (Comp, lighting, color, focus, Processing):

Your center framing works well for the composition on this but the background only distracts. This shot would be well served on a clean, black background. If possible I would suggest composing the shot so that the background was mostly empty space.

The lighting, aka the fire, gives off a bit of an odd color to the ground and background, perhaps a long shutter speed coupled with a rear curtain sync flash would help that. The image is a bit noisy and I think you could have dropped the iso down quite a bit since you were using such a long shutter speed.

I would suggest not as long of a shutter speed, 15 seconds is a really long time and 3 seconds would have been plenty and you could have gotten smoother light trails and the whole image would flow better (example here )

Challenge:

Meets the challenge but it doesn’t scream “dance”. If this wasn’t entered in a dance challenge I am not sure I would think this was a photo of dancing but regardless I like your take on the subject and it was interesting.

Artistic/Emotion:

This has all the makings of a really artistic shot but for me some technical work takes away from that.

Summary:

Not a bad finish at all for your third challenge and great job on a personal best. This shot scored very well for the challenge and you received some excellent comments during voting, all in all I would say it is a success.

Aspyre
by Trinilos

Comment by mycelium:
Cool shot... I think you'd have been better off with a shorter exposure, as well as an external flash to make the figure clear.

Icecycle
by Trinilos

Comment by Issus:
Interesting title!

The focus looks a little soft, or perhaps it's blurred. If you're shooting handheld perhaps you could consider using a tripod, which would also let you get a little more light into your picture and drop your ISO (it looks fairly noisy as well.)

Haunted Walkway
by Trinilos

Comment by PGerst:
** Critique Club **

Hello from the critique club.

Composition
While the darkness and lone light do convey a sense of haunting, the challenge goal was to use perspective to create the dramatic effect. Photographs of this nature should be taken from a view not normally seen. This photograph was taken from the same vantage point as anyone who may be walking on the trail. Compare this to the 3rd place winner. How often does a person kneel down by the side of a swing? That is the sense of perspective.

One thing you can do to practice perspective is to follow this exercise:

1) Pick a focal length and stick with it.
2) Pick an object, somewhere, anywhere and walk a distance away so you can cover the object with a finger. Take a photo.
3) Walk a few steps closer to the object. Take a photo.
4) Keep doing so until the object completely fills the frame.
5) Repeat, this time, on your knees.
6) Repeat, this time, on your stomach.
7) Very all the photos on your computer order them on the screen to get a sense of the change of perspective.
8) A week or a few days later, do it all again with another object.

Technical
I don't want to spend too much on the technical aspects of the photo because in this case, the composition is the most important. There are many parts of this photo that appear slightly blurry. This may be due to the 10s exposure or the aperture used. At 50mm, a f/1.8 aperture only has an acceptable depth of field of 1 ft at 10ft, 3.5 ft at 20ft, 23 ft at 50ft. Keep aware of the DOF when photographing with such a wide aperture.

Icecycle
by Trinilos

Comment by Luci11e:
I think it photos such as this it's very important to watch how you frame the subject. If you had backed off just a half a step you would have been able to keep the whole front tire and in my opinion would have made a much better shot.

Haunted Walkway
by Trinilos

Comment by MinsoPhoto:
I like the dark eery feel of the but not real sure how it meets the challenge.

Haunted Walkway
by Trinilos

Comment by R-eyes:
Very good sense of solitude

Haunted Walkway
by Trinilos

Comment by EL-ROI:
neat lighting and colors creates an eerie scene yet the perspective is pretty plain shot straight ahead