A Wheel Runs Through It
by canon78

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club -

And welcome to world of DPC. You have a good idea here as far as your composition. I believe if you had worked a bit with it in PS you could have had an image that stood out better. Playing with saturation on the different color channels could have brought out the colors in the sky to give you more contrast and pop on the coaster. Playing a bit more with levels or curves could have also brightened the picture up as well. With an amusment park shot my feeling is that the pic needs to be vibrant and alive where this seems a bit flat as is. Any of these steps would easily pass advanced editing rules (and even basic editing). To get the better scores your image needs to stand out - lighting and colors I think are what hurt this most as you fit the challenge easily with this entry. If you cropped this down I might reconsider as having more sky in the shot may also help the tight feel (almost cluttered) look that this has.

As for the shrinking down aspect - there is a great tutorial on how to SAve For Web that will give you the largest and highest quality picture possible to enter. You really want to maximize the dimensions and get your longest side to the 640 mark. A quick search in the forums or how to section will lead you in the right direction.

Overall not a bad first entry (My first three scores were in the mid 4s). Again - welcome to DPC. I look forward to seeing your future work. Have a blast!!!

Tim

Eye of God
by chalice

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club -

OK - So i gave you a pretty detailed comment from the trading post. And after reading that comment again it pretty much stands the same. I am not quite sure how to go about returning this to the pile to be commented on so what I will do is ask one of my friends to give you a comment on this as a replacement. Let me know if thats not cool and I will see what I have to do to get you back in line.

Tim

(copied just in case CC management looks to see if I did my job)
OK - as an abstract I think this shot works very well. Cool colors and textures. The yellow on the corner though should either be gone or have more of it. I see the little bit of it and want to see more of it. It has a contrasting look and feel to it compared to the rest of the pic. I had absolutley no clue what this was a picture of. But for the challenge it was tough to vote this high IMO. I personally felt that you needed to understand what the subject was to be able to relate to the movement. Spending more time looking at it now makes me feel that I may have scored it a bit harshly, but in the DPC voting world where you spend all of a second or two glimpsing at a shot this didnt grab me or make me want to stay to inspect it further. At voting time I thought it was not interesting or relevent as a motion blur shot. Looking at it deeper now and reading your description I can see what you were shooting for but I still think it would have done much better in an abstract challenge.

Please tell me I don't have to read all this!!!
by talikf

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique CLub -

First off let me say that you easily met the challenge and in a different way than many of the others. You have a great idea here. The blur works great with it being nice and smoot. And the clarity and focuson you is good too - nice that there is very little blur if any on your face and body. Your expression lends well to the title and action at hand.

To make this shot better IMO - the colors and lighting seem a bit flat. Better lighting or maybe even shifting to black and white could have helped this image stand out better overall. Maybe a darker background to highlight the edges of the page blur could have helped as well. But - for a last minute shot and entry I think you did great. a 5.9 is nothing to complain about and replacing a pic on your highest rated row is what we all strive for in the end anyways right? Good job.

Tim

Not So Still Life
by Neil

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club -
This shot did not grab me right off the bat. You definitely met the challenge with the camera action causing the blurring motion, but if I remember correctly while I was voting I did not stay long on this shot. It did not grab my attention.

Now, coming back to look at it again with fresh eyes and time to spare I may have judged a bit too harshly. The blur does give a pretty cool pinwheel effect and the choice to have only one red rose be your focal point was good. The other flower colors blend very nicely. The background lighting does good to enhance the mellow colors and blur.

I still have a few issues though probably not anything that could have been taken care of. If there was anyway to really get the center rose to be sharp would have made this much better. You have pretty good detail though and I doubt that there was any realistic way to have the rose moving with you to keep it totally in focus. I think this would have done better with a square crop as well. With such a close crop on the three sides, it leaves the bottom negative space feeling a bit awkward in my eyes.

Overall a good variation on the challenge theme and once again I believe that I was a bit harsh in my initial vote. This shot does better with time but unfortunately that is one thing many DPC voters do not give to enough pictures. It is a pretty shot and shold have done a bit better in my current opinion. Welcome back from your short break of entries and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

Tim

antelope2.jpg
by kjennings

Comment:
Beautiful. My favorite of all that you posted. Great job!

Yum...Yum...
by sherpet

Comment:
Now I thought I liked the last shot I commented on best - but this one is better. Great expression, great colors and detail and the off centered crop works great. Print this one and frame it!

uhhh, I Think There's Somethin' on Your Face...
by Blue Moon

Comment:
LOL - Looks almost more realistic than many drawn on eyebrows that I have seen. Great capture and lovely curves.

Swirl
by puzzled

Comment:
Pretty cool shot. Great shadows and textures. Like the symmetry between her head and skirt. Great shot.

eye was framed and gagged
by jdannels

Comment:
Now that one is just odd - lol.

P A P E R T O R C H
by PurpleFire

Comment:
Simple, smooth and great colors. Love the negative space and the angle the paper is coming out at. One of my top picks of the challenge. Bumping up.