View from a moving trainby
Bruce_the_RobertComment: Robert, these opinions are just my own. Photos that score well on this site tend to evoke some sort of strong emotion; the current free study winners clearly evoke a level of wonder, awe or tranquility with many voters.
I'm curious as to what emotion you feel your photo evokes? How is this photo different from any other photo that could be taken from a moving train moving through farmland? The scores you received are almost uniformly middle-of-the-road, which would suggest that people thought that your technicals were okay (given the difficulty of the shot) but that it didn't evoke a strong feeling either way.
Personally, it doesn't evoke any feeling from me. I don't even know what I'm looking at, except that it's agricultural. I suppose it's a grain silo. Maybe you're trying to evoke a sense of tradition? Making a comment on the decline of cooperative farming? I'm just not sure. But in the five seconds I would have given this shot when voting, none of those stand out.
I don't think that you have to be totally conventional to do well on the site, nor hit the voters over the head with your message, but it's been proven again and again that subtlety usually doesn't pay off.
I hope this makes sense. Best of luck in future challenges.