Watching the Dancers
by OmanOtter

Comment:
Hi Sean, here's a critique for you...
It's a pity this shot relies on it's title to explain what they are doing. The photo itself makes me wonder why these men are sitting there. There's a range of people and expressions, but they look a little bored. On the RHS, I would crop off the end of the row, and remove the blown-out highlight in the background. The backlighting gives a nice rim-light to define some outline points of each face. Some shadow adjustment in photoshop would help to bring up the rest of the faces to see their expressions better, and this would really help the viewer connect with the subjects. The overall photo looks a little crooked, and this might also be helped by cropping the RHS, so the eye has no reference to know it's crooked. :)

Glorious
by Melethia

Comment:
Hi Deb, here's a critique for you...
Interesting to look at the image below you in the scores - different place, but almost the same image! :) This is an amazing grand cathedral, and a good HDR shot. For me, the fact that it's not quite straight is rather unsettling. Being HDR, there is a lot of amazing detail here, but the strength of a good HDR is that the overall composition is still strong in the midst of the detail, and I feel that your image lacks a good focus point - a resting place for the viewer. Local contrast is maybe a little high, but exposure and colour are good.

Tilt En Vogue
by colorcarnival

Comment:
Hi Michelle, a critique for you. I actually really like this image, but I think your own comments probably sum up why it didn't score well. I think the tilt works really well. Particularly with his funky pose, it doesn't look odd that he's tilted. The highlight on the face is a big negative. Ideally, he would be shadowed with a diffuser, and maybe a reflector used to bring his face up a little, and maybe some lightening in PS. Ideally, I think he would be closer to the camera. There's a funny line on his collar. Maybe just a black t-shirt would be better. The high contrast editing is too much for me. I often do this, and have to look at it again the next day, and then add some fill-light. The heavy editing look to the sky would also bring the votes down I think. It is a nice effect, but looks unnatural. As another idea, it might be interesting to see this shot in colour, or maybe a selective desat. But overall, I think it's pretty cool. This is definitely worth going back there for a reshoot.

Blossom on Ice
by Pug-H

Comment:
Hi Pug, here's a critique for you.
These flowers are appearing in a few photos this month. Must be the right time of year. :) Interesting texture in the shiny paint. I don't think it quite looks like ice, but no matter. The colours are not bad, although a little shadow boost and saturation boost might help. Being a car, it's more a grey blue - perhaps a real blue blue might look nicer. The negatives for me are the crop and the lighting. The left side of the image isn't really adding anything. There's another reflection of something else there, as well as the flower stem and it's shadow, all distracting from the subject of the flower and it's reflection, and the line of the stem leads the eye out of the picture. I'd remove whatever else was making the other reflection. The shallow DOF is nice, although some of the petals are a little blurry. But a nice idea

After the Storm
by impilot

Comment:
Hi John, here's a critique for you. Pug-H is getting ahead of me in the critiques, so I'm trying not to read his first. :)
I like the play of colours here with the blue strip of sky, and the all-purvasive browns in the foreground. I would tend to include a little more in this image. The tree on it's own is not enough. The posts are distracting sitting on the edges of the image like this. They don't quite work to define the image, and they aren't sure if they want to be in or out of the picture. Also, the vanishing point is close to the edge of the image. I'd like to see it included, and possibly even a little of the road beside. The line of a road can be a very powerful composition tool to direct the viewer's eye.

"1575" or "What Remains"
by epescala

Comment:
Hi Lisa, here's a critique for you...
For me, composition is the main negative for this shot. There are a lot of competing lines - horizontals on the hedge, floor lines, and in the architecture, moving toward perspective diagonals, as well as many vertical details on the building. However, none of these lines are significant enough to form the important composition. Lots of detail lines, but no real composition. The centre of focus is probably the sticking out arch, which is on the right of the image, and looking right off the edge, so the viewers eye starts on the right of the image, and then gets pushed past the little background building and powerlines and off the right of the image.
The high contrast makes the image a little dark overall. Perhaps a little shadow boost in photoshop could help this, but I would try to find another viewpoint with better lighting, or maybe bracket the exposures and mix them in photoshop to get some shadow detail. The dramatic sky is nicely exposed.

I am smiling!
by actnout

Comment:
This looks to be a small crop from a much larger image. It may not be obvious at first glance, but it is quite apparent to the trained eye, and I see a few others commented on it too. You've obviously made the decision to crop right down, which is fine, but it's best to make this decision before the shutter is pressed, and get closer if you can. If this was a full photo of the seal's head, I would say crop it closer to get rid of the odd-looking pose and the distracting background, but it's already cropped beyond the technical limit, so maybe there was a wider composition that was usable? Anyway, enough about the cropping. Let's move on. The colours are slightly warm, which is not a bad thing here. The pose is a little odd, like a giant worm with a seal's head. :) The title is a little cheesy. It might have been better to go with the obvious "Seal", or better, the official name of this type of seal. I know it's fickle, but I think a cheesy title does actually pull down the score of the photo. Despite it's minor faults, I think this photo should have scored better than it did.

March Madness
by Donna21

Comment:
Hi Donna, here's a critique...
This is a great snow image. The detail in the trees is amazing. I would be tempted to crop this image closer. The buildings on the left don't really add to this composition. I'm not sure about the right - there's some really nice branch detail there, so you'd have to trade this off against getting rid of the building. So I'd try some closer crops to see how much of these can be removed and still keep the feel of the image. The tree and the benches are the important part, and enough of the detailed branches needs to be kept to show the feeling. There's some subtle colours here. I can see blues, greens, and also some warmer pinks on the left, with an almost peach-blossom feel. I would work with some colour balance adjustments to see what can come from these subtle colours, and whether they could be enhanced, or desaturated to improve the overall image.

No Fog in Sight
by Moose408

Comment:
Hi Craig. Here's a critique for you...
Colour are nicely saturated, and contrast is quite good, perhaps just a touch dark from the high-contrast back-lighting. I don't think the focus is an issue - a little USM on the final shot would fix this up no problem. Composition-wise, the lighthouse as the focus of the image might be better larger in the frame and off-centred a little. The log is fighting for attention here, so if you want to use two very different subjects like this, you need to find a way to link them. Perhaps they can mirror each other's shapes, or connect together in some way. Alternatively, pick one of them. The lighthouse with the keeper's hut is so nice on it's own, you can probably get a great shot by forgetting about the log, and walking closer the lighthouse. Different times of day would give many different great moods and lighting on this lighthouse. I hope you've planned some times to revisit this location. :) (by the way, where is it?)

Just Thinkin'
by karmat

Comment:
Lovely shot, and a lovely letter to go with it. :) I'm sure my 4yo daughter would love a pink portrait of herself. There are 2 things that I think let the photo down in the scores. Firstly, the soft focus is great, but needs to be sharpened. Soft focus is a large area softness, and still needs the pixel-size sharpening on top so that soft focus doesn't lean toward blurry. The other thing is the dynamic range. This is a great high-key portrait, but the highs don't quite go to white. Careful tweaking of the levels or curves will improve this image a lot. And white BW is nice, a little bit of pink never goes astray. :)