Synchronicity
by violinist123

Comment:
Positives:
Framing, image balance and composition are incredibly well done. Technical quality is right on! The use of the background building brickwork for natural framing is a wonderful touch. The juxtaposition of the runner with the sign adds considerable interest and nice balance to this imagery. A thought provoking image well thought out by the photographer. Worthy of a "best of" challenge. Kudos to you!

Technicals:
Composition, framing and balance in this image are its strengths. Nice BW and good choice for this image. Just the right amount of grain for the composition. The crop is EXCEPTIONAL. It is absolutely level and using the buiding brickwork for natural framing is a wonderful added touch. Your attention to detail is to be commended, that is the hallmark of a great photographer.

After post processing a thing that can be done is to apply a quick "Autolevels" adjustment to the image to see if you have not screwed it up. If it does NOT change it normaly means post processing is 'good'. There are exceptions to this. Your image, of course, is rock solid! No surprise.

The challenge:
Scorewise, this image was affected primarily by two things. One, it is submitted to a free study challenge with over 600 hundred images and free study challenges tend to have very high quality images. Two, DPC voters are affected by funk and flash and vote them higher, particularly in a challenge with lots of entries. Yours requires more attention to detail to be appreciated. It did not get it.

I see there is a statistical overabundance of 2s given. This probably comes from voters who noticed the motion blur of the runner, assumed it meant the image was out of focus, and did not look beyond that.

I would not change a thing. Personally, I'd be proud to have this image in my portfolio.

family
by boysetsfire

Comment:
Positives:
Nice perspective and an interesting angle of capture. Its different. The DOF nicely draws attention to the girl looking up. The variety of people provides a lot of stories within this capture for the viewer to speculate on. Nice wide variety of colors.

Technicals:
Technical quality is generally good. Use of DOF to draw attention to the girl is achieved. Sharpness is well done. The horizontal lines in this image are off a little, it looks like you might need to rotate it slightly clockwise.

Generally speaking the distribution of people works well except for the left foreground. The boy's left arm looks like it is sticking out of his head and that is a distraction. You might consider cloning out the forehead of the adult behind him. The left foreground looks cluttered.

The challenge:
The concept of love is hard to immediately recognize within the context of the composition and that probably affected this image in voting.

101
by gg3rd

Comment:
Positives:
There is a lot to like about this image. The care you've taken with the symmentry in this composition is exceptional, as is its sharpness. The technicals are well above average and color is good. It is one of those images that are interesting but the viewer has trouble saying why. Only a true photographer would take a picture like this.

Technicals:
As I said, overall the technicals on this image are exceptional and well above average. You have to get nit picky to find faults. Some faults you have control of, others you do not. You've done so well that the slight tilt of the building somewhere between .1 and .4 degrees actually becomes noticeable.

The lighting on the roof, though a nice golden color detracts from the overall symmetry of the rest of the image. The blue specks along the edges of the roof are distractions I'd recommend cloning out. The tubular vent on the right is to close to the edge of the frame. Cloning it out might have been a good idea but I'd ask about that first.

The challenge:
Free study images tend to be above average submissions at DPC. The unbalanced lighting on the roof is the killer here. You were probably hurt by that and the fact that static 'photographer eye' images like this tend to score lower than others. Yours is very much an above average image but got a below average score.

cool blue
by PhotoDave

Comment:
Positives:
This is a nice image. It has an unusual and refreshing placement within the frame for the main sharp icicle. The soft focused icicles in the BG add interst to the composition. Choice of blue tones always work well for ice images.

Technicals:
It has above average technicals and tones. Sharpness is good but it can handle a lot more sharpening and would look even better. It is hard to describe but the other BG icicles almost look as though they have unrealistic haloing around them. It does not affect the rest of the image. That is probably due to your post processing.

Viewers may get distracted wondering what the elongated out-of-focus objects on the right side of the frame are and that draws attention away from the main icicle.

The challenge:
Meets the challenge well and is a classic icicle view. I suspect an overabundance of icicle images cause this one to be overlooked for a hihgher score.

Play
by mia67

Comment:
quote=mia67] [/quote]
Positives:
Overall I really like this composition. You captured an interesting expression. The sharpness is exceptionally good and the technicals are generally very good. Your use of the rule of thirds works well and placement of the left eye on the intersection point is a nice touch. Sepia works very well with this image.

Technicals:
There are not lots of things wrong with this image. It is very well done. The only major flaw is that the left shoulder, arm and the child's back are overexposed. I checked with eyedropper to be sure it wasn't just my imagination.

The 'object' in the BG behind the left side of the child's head acts as a distraction.

The background has graininess but that really does not hurt the composition.

The challenge:
Submissions to free studies like "best of 2006" generally have exceptionally high quality images and yours got lost in that. Perhaps the overexposured areas were viewed as a major flaw by voters and disliked the BG distraction and that is why it was voted so low.

All the Possibilities
by EducatedSavage

Comment:
Positives:
Solid composition and an interesting selection for a photo study. The fine detail directly in front of the sphere is nice. The lighting setup is reasonably good.

Technicals:
This image has a commonly found flaw in DPC submissions - over exposure - which is ironic for a low-key challenge. The bright lighting in the sphere itself is completely washed out which is particularly disappointing given that it is in the main subject. You want your composition to have a full range of brightness up to pure white which you do, but you do not want to let it go overboard and lose detail. Unfortunately, you did.

Looking at the luminosity display and sampling points around the image it looks like you may have made some serious color manipulations as indicated that even in the 'black' areas there is a lot more red and green than blue. Normally you want the black areas to go all the way to 0,0,0.

There are a lot of tiny bright specks and distracting detail that draws attention away from the sphere. Sharpness is a little soft, but sharpening it more makes the bright specs even more distracting. It would be best to clean and smooth the sphere and re-compose and reshot it without the specs.

The challenge:
Technically speaking, a low-key image is one where there are more pixels on the left (dark) side of the luminosity display (histogram) than on the right. Except for the overexposed area in the sphere this meets that definition.

Low-key normally is a technique best suited for studies of lighting and tonality. Your selection has great promise for doing that but is a little weak in the technicals for bringing it out.

February in Vermont
by bassbone

Comment:
Positives:
Interesting perspective showing the icicles but not their base attachment. Though small it is nice you capture a drop falling. Composition works well.

Technicals:
Icicle soft focus is this image's greatest defect. The entire composition is directed to them so they should be as technically perfect as possible. Overall composition is weak.

Lighting is OK but not exceptional. Early morning and late afternoon are the best times for outdoor phototography because that is when there is the most interesting lighting and shadow. The icicle composition would benefit from that type of lighting. Background softness and content is OK but not very interesting.

The blue spot in the BG just below one of the icicles competes with it for attention so therefore acts as a distraction.

Looks like the image is not 'level' and tilted several degrees off vertical, a problem I have a lot myself. :) If done intentionally then I'd recommend at least a 15 degree angle. The human eye normally wants things at lesser angles to be perfectly vertical.

The challenge:
Obviously this fits the challenge. There is a long tradition of icicles imagery at DPC. The highest scoring ones are techically perfect images most often with one of more drops of water as prominent elements of the composition. You may want to review some of those for yourself to see what makes them 'good'.

Message edited by author 2007-03-07 20:58:45.

Hesitant Winter Rider
by neophyte

Comment:
Positives:
Balance of image, both tonal and compositional, with the police car and biker, go together well and BW is a good choice for presentation. High contrast works given the implied tension between 'RAT' and the police. Unsure if the maltese crosses were setup for the image, but support the composition.

Technicals:
BW is generally done well. Overall, focus and composition are OK... not exceptional. Perspective from behind the biker is fine but is taken from a snapshot angle. Compositional balance would further benefit from another element, like a pedestrian eyeing the biker's intent from the curb on the left side of the frame. Images with snow are always hard because of brightness and loss of detail as is true in your case.

The challenge:
Meets the challenge well particular with the biker car interaction.

Peace
by thegrandwazoo

Comment:
This is a great photograph!

Preserving parks for future generations (Yosemite)
by bryanbrazil

Comment:
Congrats on the blue. Beautiful landscape. It has haloing around the right side mountains but otherwise a gorgeous composition. The western drought must be a lot worse than I thought. That looks more like late summer than winter. I always thought Yosemite was snowbound in winter. Global warming is taking it's toll. :)