Hi
by owen

Comment:
Owen: Delighted to see that you scored so well with this rivetting image! Nice work.

Conspiracy of Silence
by roadrunner

Comment:
Super Duper! Love T! P.

Anarchy
by Sherri1209

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club, Sherri ...
I am very pleased to have drawn your colour portrait for comment. As you see below, I appreciated your image during voting, especially as it came (for me) after a long run of nauseating pictures of people apparently made of molten plastic! Alas, the average voter treated you a little more harshly ... but such is the burden of the truly audacious. My critique of the image is very short & sweet: it was deliberately rebellious (against the concept of the 'ideal' portrait), and therefore thoroughly anarchic, and therefore aptly named. To be successful, such an image has to repel the majority of its viewers ... it's got to undermine their values and their comfort zone sufficiently to goad them into rejecting it. It scored only 4 point something (placing it behind at least a hundred entirely vacuous mediocrities). And therefore I judge it to have been a tremendous success. I'm sure that you do as well.
Cheers,
Paul Martin

Guys and Dolls
by JPR

Comment:
Doll's very cool. You're just nasty. What would the Little Sisters at the convent say?

Hunger
by JPR

Comment:
Oh, yes. Again.

Red fox
by puzzled

Comment:
I love unfortunate weirdness ... it's the best kind!

Message edited by author 2005-10-10 03:08:02.

Caged
by marklovell

Comment:
Hi Mark, and greetings from the Critique Club!
Well I have an advantage over all the commentors below in that I know (because of your comments) that the softness is really not poor focus, it's just miniscule and unavoidable subject movement during such a long exposure. The idea is impressive ... the image conveys exactly what I imagine you intended; a kind of "trapped in a high-tech world" feeling. The creation of a virtual cage using laser light is a clever device for that theme. The soft 'focus', the limited tonal range, the restricted colour palette and the flat facial expression of the subject all add to the impersonal, 'futuristic identity card' character of the portrait. Not a photograph that will appeal to all, but it is undeniably an original and bold entry in this challenge.
Best wishes
Paul Martin

First Catch
by Fitzie

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!
Well, it may be a candid (see below), but it's a 'posed' candid, so that makes it a portrait too, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, it's your first submission here, so who cares about semantics? It is certainly more than just a 'snapshot', and has some quite impressive elements to it. The most important of these is the fact that you have really captured the wonderful ambivalence of this moment ... he's clearly proud of the fish but remains unprepared to abandon his misgivings about handling it! All of us who've ever caught a fish at his age remember that moment and that feeling so well. And your image is technically proficient; lighting, focus, and all that guff ... it has a pleasing natural feel to it. The pattern of the shadows actually adds to the impact, in my view. It directs our attention to the gloved fish. As for the cluster of legs in the top right corner, yes they may be a distraction, but if the cost of recomposing to exclude them was to miss the honest emotion of this once-in-a-lifetime moment (for the boy), then you made the right choice ... the photographer's choice ... carpe diem!
Best wishes,
Paul Martin

Again With The Camera!?!
by AzCKelly

Comment:
Hi Cindy & greetings from the Critique Club.
I'm not going to just repeat the things the other commentors said (below). It's all good advice, and they all recognised that the potential of this image was not fully realised due to a few aspects of technique. Perhaps the most constructive and immediately practical advice overall came from emorgan49. She knows what she's talking about, so if any of her advice was unclear to you, don't hesitate to send her a PM.
Now, as I have nothing new to offer you on this image, I looked instead at all the other photos in your portfolio. You have a nice eye for recognising the beauty of your spectacular surroundings in Arizona (and a bit of Mexico). It is especially good to see that you are trying a range of subjects and styles. Keep doing that ... it's really the best way to learn. By the way; many of your titles are very clever ... they indicate that you have a finely-developed understanding of what you're seeing in your subjects and what it might mean. And that's important ... having vision is at least as important as having great technique, and it's certainly harder to come by! You can have both.
Final advice: Much of your work (including this portrait) could have been strengthened by some simple post-processing techniques. Even very simple processing software such as probably came with your camera can do a lot. There's a forum thread just started up on basic post-processing, mentored by Bear_Music. It would be a good place to learn about things like tonal levels, contrast adjustment, sharpening, colour adjustment, etc. Best wishes,
Paul Martin

Staircase Descending to Fish Pond
by Keith Maniac

Comment:

Originally posted by ubique: Hey Chris - sorry for all the bizarre duplications ... I'd been trying unsuccessfully to post when the site was acting up, and didn't realise all my attempts were being queued up like that. Hopefully someone (D&L?) might rescue me & delete all the superfluous edited posts below. P.

Done - thanks to whoever removed them!