Lets play some darts
by jnthn205

Comment:
Wow, don't get hit! Definitely original.

USS Midway - San Diego Night
by ingrawc

Comment:
Taken from one of the high rises? Nice.

Nourished By The Sun
by SquishyB

Comment:
I saw your forum post...I'll bite...

The image definitely meets the challenge, and you've done a nice job keeping the sky blue behind the tree and sun, which is often harder than it looks. The trouble with shooting straight into the sun is that the sun is a really bright light, and everything that isn't the sun becomes unnaturally dark. It looks like you're trying to show the sunlight filtering through the fuzzy seed things, but the sun's really bright, so there's too much contrast for it to be attractive. You might try shooting when the sun's lower in the sky and not so bright.

The other thing is to be careful of your background. In this shot, there's some black, blobby looking pine trees in the background. In the lower right corner, they serve a purpose of showing off the sunlight on the birch tree, but on the left side, they're just dark and distracting, and they look like they're leaning backwards, because the camera is pointed towards the sky.

I think on a shot like this, it really helps to ask yourself 2 questions:

1) What is the subject?
2) Is there anything in the shot that's going to pull the viewer's focus away from the subject?

I just looked at your portfolio. It's no accident that on your top rated images, you've done a great job of isolating the subject, and on the lower rated images, you haven't. Especially on DPC, when the voters only look at the image for a few seconds, if there's anything distracting, the voter won't take the time to look any further.

Three Boats
by JeffryZ

Comment:
San Diego! Cool!

Arch
by Citadel

Comment:
I've been staring at the shot for the last couple of minutes, trying to form some thoughts about it. There's nothing really wrong with the shot. It meets the challenge, is in focus, properly exposed, the blue sky is nice. Not a killer subject, but not bad either. I think where you could get the most improvement out of this shot would be to shoot or process it in a way where it's not quite so dark. When I took the 5 second "voter view" (I didn't vote on it, but you know what I mean), my first impression was *dark*. I'm not sure you can do this with this subject, especially considering the challenge topic, but maybe shoot from an angle that doesn't leave the arch in total silhouette. The arch looks like it might have some interesting textures. See if you can get an angle that emphasizes the textures with shadow, instead of turning everything black.

Hope this helps.

Trying Out the Wife's Potions
by Mr_Pants

Comment:
Perfect! 10!

Spin Cycle
by MilesW

Comment:
Awesome! Can't wait until next week to see how this was done.

DIZZY
by dphillips

Comment:
Gotta love it! We had one dog, a great dane, who would wake up every morning and shake like this. Her ears hitting the sides of her head sounded like machine gun fire. I don't know how she could stand it. Some mornings I couldn't stand it, either :-)

Now, on to the picture....it's not a bad snapshot, but it's very noisy. I'm guessing you were in a place with poor light, using a high ISO, and that's where the noise comes from. Using something like neat image won't work for a shot like this, because you want to retain the texture of the dog's fur. The only real option you have is to get more light, either by using a flash, or by going outside.

Reality TV
by muur88

Comment:
The picture is great, and definitely meets the challenge. I'm not sure what the title has to do with the picture. No matter. 7 for now, be back for more later.

Pop Culture Toss Up
by J-Me

Comment:
Totally cool idea. Nice and sharp. It looks like everything's on the same plane, like it's laying on a glass table maybe, but that works pretty well. This might have worked better without the b&w conversion. the mess of colors might have given it more life.