Baby in Bucket
by avermaa

Comment:
This is almost a 'lensbaby effect', although to be honest, to my eye it certainly looks like it was done in post processing.

A bit more care with the color in the skin tones would have helped it. It seems a bit strong in the blues/magenta. This might have been a result of the camera trying to correct for the strong color of the bucket in auto white balance.

I think it's cute and while I don't like the way the effects have been applied, I think the effects themselves are pretty fun, so I'm going to take the vote down and bring it back up again to 6. I wish there was a 6.5...

On second thoughts, nyeh, it's a happy challenge, so I'll give ya a free 'happy point'! :)

Fleur
by photoman78

Comment:
Great pic of the flower and good choice for colors. It's pretty obvious that you put significant thought and effort into the lighting on this one and it has been done very effectively.

A bit of blur on the BG area would have been good I think. This would have been easy to do by using one of the color channels as a layer mask.

I don't know if it's intentional, but there a bit of 'blotchiness' in the overall tone of greens in the BG which help give it a more natural look as if it were a strongly out of focus background area.

Also, the tone of the greens in the BG change from warm to cool, which is a bit odd. Might have been worth just a tiny bit more tweaking to equalize that. Maybe not.

I don't think the border helps anything here. It would have been preferable to have a larger view of the flower. It certainly seems that you have enough detail to manage that.

Goalkeeper
by oriana

Comment:
Tricky bit of framing on this one. I can't help but get the feeling that you wanted to show the moment captured, but that you actually didn't get the edges on the bottom. Perhaps a clever border might have helped balance this pic a bit different/better (?).

The line from the foot/leg/arm to eyes is effective, and suggests the square crop, but the rest of the content of the pic doesn't quite match.

Also, I'm sure you don't need to be told that it's backfocused, but that pulls my eye's attention to the left. My entry was also backfocused since it was taken on my first day with my cam and the lens I got was faulty. I addressed this by applying a bit of gaussian blur to the areas that were erroneously in focus, then coming back to treat the rest of the image as to sharpening and contrast and such. There is a lot of leeway with the image size on DPC.

Also, the boy has a few very strong dark features in his face. It might be improved to use a tiny, tiny bit of careful dodging to help bring attention to that area.

Overall, there's enough good here that it's easy to see why this was your choice for 'hidden gem'.

Torsos and Trees
by JeffryZ

Comment:
On my first glance, I actually thought that the trees were part of the art. I'd say that is an indicator of something effective.

I wonder if the fact that the trees all seem 'linked' to the legs that are in the front was part of the decision process for choosing this pic.

The IR treatment is 'so-so'. I'd prefer a stronger contrast in the sky, especially in the top third to make the fronds stand out better. This could have been done in post processing.

I would definitely call this a 'mediocre pic with a little something special'. Seems to fit nicely with the challenge. 6.

End of Day
by Crafty

Comment:
There's something I don't much care for about this picture. I think it might be the narrow field of view. On the other hand, there is also something appealing about it in the 'eye' of the image.

Since this challenge isn't about technicals, I'm weighting the score up for the artistic 'eye.

Heroes
by Jammur

Comment:
Now you have definitely got something going on here. Have you considered taking a look at using a specific B&W color filter to increase contrast in your sky? I think it would help things a fair bit.

Newquay Harbour
by surfinrobin

Comment:
Simple and appealing. The bird adds a tiny spot of interest which plays to the 'hidden gem' idea.

Girl on Swing
by supacohen

Comment:
AHHH she's giving me the CRAZY EYE! heh. Maybe I've voted on too many images for the night.

I really like the composition of this and the intriguing yellow BG. The pedestrian in the back isn't distracting, but does add some interest.

I gave this a 6, but as soon as I left for the next pic, I knew I had made a mistake and came back to bump it up a bit.

damp lineage
by jjbeguin

Comment:
compelling.

A Taste of 'The Prom'
by Ali_Babua

Comment:
I don't understand the title. That doesn't impact the image at all, but it also doesn't make sense.