Van Gogh Sky
by Neil

Comment:
Wonderful use of photography to create abstract art. I really can see Van Gogh's influence in this; the colours, strokes and curves all support that. 8

Gloria
by Zoomdak

Comment:
A sunset that gives me more to look at than just a pretty sky! Wonderful use of foreground rocks to provide composition. Your positioning, which makes the rays almost emanate from the rocks, is excellent. The horizontal line of orange reflection near the shore is also lovely.

bravado
by ellamay

Comment:
This is a wonderful capture of a great moment and from that perspective, as a wildlife addict, I find it both charming and fascinating. Photographically I think the impact is marred by the gazelles just behind which muddy the lines a little too much. I appreciate fully that, one a safari holiday, one doesn't often have the luxury that wildlife photographers have of moving to a better position.

Waldo's Peak
by ankurlahoti

Comment:
Critique Club

Initial thoughts
Reasonably nice landscape, spoiled by overprocessing and overly dominant shadows.

Composition/ Content
The scene presented here is a pleasant one with some interesting curves in the road (I think a vantage point showing a more complete zig zag would be even more appealing) and an intriguing glimpse of a city below.
The off-centred composition of the main hill provides a nice diagonal and balance.

Background
The clouds are forming some wonderful shapes and add so much more than a plain sky could have. I like the sense of depth provided by the haziness of the farthest hills and the city area.

Camera Work & Processing
I don't know whether the processing is an attempt to correct exposure problems but it strikes me as very excessive.
There is the strangest very bright line of separation between the main foreground and the background sky and cityscape. This looks very unnatural.
The shadow on the front of the hill is very dark and, because the hill is such a large part of the image, means too much of the image is too dark, in my opinion. Shooting with the sun in a different position might improve this by giving some lovely greens and details in that main area.
This darkness is contrasted against a really bright background and I think that overall contrast is just too high.

Fits The Challenge
In my opinion, the Waldo challenge is about hiding a person in plain view, so to speak, rather than hiding a person by making them so small as to be a mere few pixels. Whilst the person on the hill isn't hard to spot he or she is almost incidental to the image for me.
That said, the image does fit the challenge in that it includes a person that the viewer has to search for.

My Opinion On The Photo
Poor use of natural lighting and overprocessed but does have potential.

Sweet Slumber
by K-Rob

Comment:
What a lovely close up. When I view it I'm seeing some strange lines between colour tones, almost like a print with water spilled on it. I don't know it's a compression artifact or something else. Otherwise, a lovely image with interesting DOF.

Mid Flow
by Manic

Comment:
Goodness, I really differ from the average voter on this one, don't I? I think this image ROCKS!

Morning Dew
by Chiqui

Comment:
I really love this as an abstract. The strong light and shadow, especially with the focal point on the water droplet, the strong diagonal lines and the randomly positioned light circles create a composition that seems to resonate far more strongly with me than I entirely understand. One of my top 11 in the challenge.

Leaf
by gaurawa

Comment:
At first I looked at this and thought, "oh yeah, so they got a leaf and were able to get some diffused light spot in the background". But as I looked at it more it grew on me to a surprising extent. The lighting on the leaf is beautiful and that golden, sunlit colour just makes me feel warm and happy. But it's only with the addition of the pale, colour-coloured light spots that the composition suddenly achieves something more than just a leaf with some negative space included in the frame. It really works for me. One of my top 11 in this challenge.

What's the point?
by gajmaj

Comment:
This would be an interesting image without shallow depth of field simply because of the wonderful composition created by the strong points of focus and curving lines. But the way that shallow depth of field has transformed much of the image into this incredible soft yet textured blur just takes it to another level. The lines aren't just blurred, they seem to blend across each other in a most pleasing way. One of my top 11 in this challenge.

Tear Drop
by smokeditor

Comment:
Some might dismiss this as merely shallow DOF and not bokeh but since I'm using the broader definition of bokeh as the aesthetic contributions to overall image of the blurred areas of an image this works for me! And it's one of my top 5 favourite entries in the challenge. I just love the way the blurred branch curving away into the corner creates a sense of compositional balance and depth to the image. It's just gorgeous!