Balloon Bonnet
by kiwinick

Comment:
Crop is a little tight on the sides and her face needs to be brought out of the shadows a bit.

parrot balloon & bouquet
by tvsometime

Comment:
I think you could have done more to bring out the details in the balloon during B&W conversion, and in the flowers. Did you simply desaturate? Hue differential is almost complete lost.

Ouch
by Heyimgreen25

Comment:
Perhaps a slightly different treatment? Even just bringing in your blacks and whites - this is very heavy in the midtones.

Balloons Rising in the Sunrise Mist
by MargaretNet

Comment:
Beautiful scene that seems to have lost something in post-processing. A little more color and a little less noise?

Pop the Bass
by EscArtist

Comment:
Nice idea, but there's something about the composition that just isn't working for me. My eye wants to wander away from the focal point.

Don't forget me
by Judi

Comment:
Was almost going to say the sky is overstructured, and am still leaning that way ... but you've convinced me. One of my fav's from this challenge.

Simple pleasures...DENIED
by snaffles

Comment:
Susan pinged me with regard to my comment, feeling my "just lots of layers" comment was both unfair and missed the point of the photo. Given that I'm a new member of the critique club she expressed concern that my comment (my emphasis) wasn't in the spirit of that group. In my reply I offered my critique, and I excerpt that portion here for the record.

What probably didn't come across (in my comment) is that when I said that it, "doesn't come together in any real way", I mean that while I get what you're trying to do, it doesn't look like any two things exist on the same plain.

Outside of a little shadow under the doll, everything else looks like it could have been cut from a magazine and pasted on a sheet of construction paper to form a collage. Light direction varies from cut piece to cut piece (back left on the doll, front right on the hand, back right on the tin man, underneath the wings), the edges on some of the elements are not clean or you're missing pieces, and the fact that these disparate elements actually exist in this place of "gloomy sky and barren sand" is barely believable on an individual level, let alone as a group. You made some effort to try and show that these were all sitting on the sand, and it sort of works on the doll, but not for anything else as I see it. And a gloomier sky would have been better as the clouds are a little too white and somewhat mask the other white elements (wings, photo, skull). Perhaps replicate the sky layer with a Multiply blend mode once or twice to darken them?

So, while I get the symbolism of what it is you're trying to say (none of that was lost), I find the execution of the image to fail to show it in a real enough manner to make it work as something truly surreal. And isn't that what I'm supposed to be looking for in a digital photography challenge? And I stand by my comment - the execution looks exactly like you simply stacked a bunch of layers in the proper order and didn't little else to make one layer meld into the other. If that's what you were going for then you nailed it - but it doesn't work for me.

Message edited by author 2014-08-29 09:09:37.

The Shade Tree
by Lydia

Comment:
Want to score this higher, but the cow doesn't feel 3D to me. Shadow angles are off as well.

Bees and the City
by MargaretNet

Comment:
Cool photo. Would have scored you higher if you'd placed the bees, and more of them.

Eye of the Storm
by grahamgator

Comment:
Drops seem to be traveling in the wrong direction.