A Cold Start Of The Year
by Transparant

Comment by MeMex2:
beautifully done!

A Cold Start Of The Year
by Transparant

Comment by kiwinick:
What a fantstic part of the world to live with landscapes like yours

Leading to the Windmill
by Transparant

Comment by salmiakki:
Greetings from the Critique Club

Lovely sky - first thing I noticed about this image. It's so refreshing to find it looking so natural, I'm not a fan of the overcooked skies that seem so prevalent on DPC.

I think the main reason this didn't score so well was due to the lack of very obvious pathway. In this sort of challenge, to score well, the challenge topic has to be very "in your face", subtle doesn't tend to work around here.

The light is lovely, but unfortunately the windmill is missing the detail.

Overall, it's a solid image, just not really meeting the topic in the strictest sense.

Leading to the Windmill
by Transparant

Comment by pixelpig:
I guess sometimes the path taken is up to the individual.

To The Clouds
by Transparant

Comment by MikeO:
My favourite in this challenge, nicely captured. :)

To The Clouds
by Transparant

Comment by pixelpig:
nicely abstract

Lone Tree
by Transparant

Comment by snaffles:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

This is a well-exposed shot and meets the requirement of being in b/w...but the portrait orientation, instead of the much wider, horizontal landscape orientation, is one reason why this image did not do well. This is a photo of a tree, first and foremost, and it is simply not a lone tree.

There are many simple fixes here. First, crop your photo to landscape orientation; I can see by your settings that you used a tripod but it might have been good to reduce the depth of field so the back treeline would be out of focus and hopefully help highlight your lone tree more effectively. Also at f.11 and twilight, it is already very murky, so you want more light either with a wider aperture or longer exposure.

Finally, my favouritest thing to do in the world...change your point of view. This looks like it was shot at regular human standing eye level. If you want to isolate that tree and truly make it the only tree in the shot, be ready to squat down, or kneel or even lay belly down in the dirt and shoot up to get that one tree in the shot and no others.

Try even just one of these small techniques and see the difference it makes!

Hope this helps,

Susan

Tomato, Mozarella and Tuna.
by Transparant

Comment by jnenvir:
Anchovies are my favorite, am drooling. Why plant on the left?

Water in the dry lands
by Transparant

Comment by snaffles:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

I love the tones in this image, you have caught twilight very well. The light texture and ripples in the clouds, the pastels are wonderful, and they contrast perfectly with the darkness and heavy cracks in the dry mud. The reflections in standing pools of water are great too.

So why didn't DPC voters, infamous for loving landscapes/seascapes/sunsets in their Free Studies, vote this image higher? From my own experience here, there are three key reasons:

1) Portrait orientation for a landscape. Not for nothing is horizontal orientation often called 'landscape'!

2) Tied into that...often voters look at images on a phone or device, and must scroll down in order to see the full picture, and lose some of the impact of the image that way. And most importantly...

3) Though a lovely setting...it's a very static shot with no true focal point to draw the eye. Even just one person caught walking through the frame would help unite that lovely sky with the foreground, tie it all together, give a sense of scale to the image and interest.

Hope this has been useful,

Susan

Tomato, Mozarella and Tuna.
by Transparant

Comment by pixelpig:
and anchovy, yum!