maria pia
by charliev

Comment:
Has good detail in the shadows. You might want to try converting it to black and white. You may like it better.

Abandoned
by archiva

Comment:
It is a nice scene. This image would perform much, much better if it were converted to black and white and the horizon were leveled.

Predator
by gotrond

Comment:
Image has a lot of black but not very much detail in the dark areas. Having detail in the shadows it what sets low-key apart from other types of photography. It might be interesting to see how the composition is changed if you do nothing more than center the eye on one of the rule of thirds intersection points.

a broken bird
by ralton

Comment:
Good profile composition. Nice shallow depth of field that produces a good soft background. Most of the detail in this image is in the shadows so it meets the challenge well. However, that probably is not apparent to most voters who don't understand about that sort of thing.

I suspect it will get a pretty low score but it is actually a quite good picture with a couple adjustments. Make these three small changes and I think it would have scored much higher:
1-Converted to greyscale
2-Used "Levels" to reduce the brightest white slightly to make it seem more low-key to voters
3-Sharpened it

Hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty to do that so I could show you the result. It is here:
Your adjusted image in my temporary PBase gallery

A Star Is Born
by jmsetzler

Comment:
Wow! What a nice composition. How can a technically superior image like this that obviously meets the challenge in such a unique way get only a 5.77? I will never cease to be amazed by DPC voters.

sunrise
by gogs2000in

Comment:
Good timing to capture a sunset and there appear to be nice clouds in the scene. The good news is this image is low-key. Low-key refers to the an image that has detail concentrated in the shadows and has little or none in the highlights. However, the effect was achieved by underexposing the image and some voters will say it is not low-key, but just simply underexposed.

Looks to have a yellow color cast as well. That is common in low-light situations where the camera cannot determine correct white balance. This is correctable in post-processing with most image editors. The sunset was probably much prettier than this.

Compositionally this image could be stronger. The tower is very small and far away. If you could find a closer foreground object like a tree or building that occupies a larger portion of the frame that would add interest to the composition.

Low Key Object
by jayita

Comment:
Nothing wrong with the minimalist style you selected for this composition. Unfortunately it is not immediately recognizable to most viewers what the object is and they will find that to be a major distraction. Centering the object in a minamalist composition generally does not work all the well. You might want to to a Internet review of minimalist photography to see what others suggest.

Having a lot of black does not make a good low-key image. Tones are the strength of good low-key images and yours does not have a lot of them. The image looks to have a reddish/yellowish color cast to it but that might have been intentional.

Heirloom
by MississippiGal

Comment:
Making this a minimalist composition is a nice idea. Centering the heirloom on one of the rule of thirds intersection points may have made the image more interesting to the viewer's eye. It also appears to have a yellowish color cast that could be corrected in post processing. I can see some detail toward the upper lef of the image. That is distracting to most viewers.

Apple in low key mode
by anindya

Comment:
Yours is a nice idea but may have been implemented better. The sharpness of this image is not crisp and that is very important in minimalist compositions such as this. Centering the apple on one of the rule of thirds intersection points may have made the image more interesting to the viewer's eye. More sidelighting to add greater tonality to the image is worth a try.

Late Night Stroll
by saddler116

Comment:
The reflection in the pond makes this a nice composition and it is very well balanced. The compositional contrast between pond and structures is almost a commentary on suburbia.

To improve this image you might start with correcting the color cast. You can see it both in the slate color in the sky and yellowish/reddish hue over the rest of the scene. Though part of this effect may be due to lighting, it mostly looks like a color cast. If you could have removed the white object in the middle foreground it would have got rid of that distracting element. Under advanced rules you could simply clone it out.

Sharpness in this image is not strong and you should try to sharpen it more. Sharpness always proves to be a problem in lower light levels images like this. This problem is not unique to you.