....
by lucifero

Comment:
Don't understand. The lens zoom, or the motion, whatever, is effective as ever - although quite a tired effect to my eyes, iyt still remains a great sense of motion. The point, however, escapes me. My thought was that it had implications of running someone over, but the blocks behind the figures remove that sense. If the implication was more sinister, or even subtle, then i think there is too much going on here for that to come through. Outside of challenge things, there isn't enough sense of process for me to like it at all - I think at least some definition to that central face would be useful to the viewer.

Watering The Plant So It Turns Green Again
by aledfc

Comment:
This has a strong sense, and not just from the title, of a child's shot. It has a bland kind of naivete about it - not to mention the absolutely contradictory near-greying out of the greens mentioned in the title. Compositionally it just a bit too weak for me to think it was deliberately done - the neat angles of the lawn are too far out of frame, the light is poor on the water so that it takes a few moments to register it. As to meeting the challenge -

sunset substitute
by busalshots

Comment:
Quite clever. Colouring is good, though there seems to be some lack of steadiness to the shot - lack of detail showing in the wires. The composition is fun too - though perhaps keeping slightly more of the wires in shot might have helped overall, this is nevertheless quite effective - that framing of the two sides of the image. Given the absence of any human engagement, this is not at all bad thinking.

Too Cold, Now, For Children
by DonkerDink

Comment:
Good sense of the onset of winter, particularly aginst the idea of the playground. You've done well also with your exposure, to keep the sky under control and some interest on the foreground. The white line at the top of frame is kind of clumsy. I might have tried to shoot from even lower, to emphasise the silhouettes against the sky without losing so much against the tree-line: whilst the ordinariness of this presentation works in your favour, I think a more imposing composition would have given more effect - and the difference simply kneeling down can produce can be amazing. Some kind of fill-light process, which exists in PSP10 and in RSE might have helped bring back some foreground detail, to enhance the feeling of desertion, without blowing out the sky.

Too Late - indeed
by zxaar

Comment:
I really hope this wasn't set up: but I have remarkably little optimism for that. Has a good sense of the imstant shot for the situation - nice and shiny would have defeated the joke I guess. Funny also - but the joke doesn't last everso: it's a one-liner in that sense, requiring a swift move on to the next gag. Can't see you scoring well without finding a bit more depth to things.

Blue Window
by unknowndeath

Comment:
There's an impression of dirt and loneliness to this that quite appeals - certainly different around here. The bluw lights are interesting, and different, but I don't find it a very engaging photograph - I don't mean 'pretty' or anything like that - simply I'm not pulled in to whatever you're presenting to me - perhaps because I don't quite see what that is. The snowbound world? But then your title and the shot move the interest away from that. Different in a good way, but it feels, perhaps, different for the sake of it.

Spirits
by ubique

Comment:
I suspect maay won't like it, but I always find that this depth of border adds a certain sophistication to a shot. There is some capture of mood here, and ths lishgtly unorthodix composition is well done, and effective.

Dawn's Early Light
by qmdi

Comment:
Long exposure to get that misted effect, I'd guess - from the intensity of the lights and the brightness of the sky. Has a dreamy quality, for sure, and the tonality captured on the structure is well done.

Street Santa
by Joey Lawrence

Comment:
I don't go a bundle on the processing - puts it more into the field of painting than photography, for me. Of course, the detail and all that stuff is everso well done, and the knackered quality of the geezer's clothes, and his little prison tattoo add a contrast to his ;'cheerful' santa hat. I think I don't like the gaze into camera - inevitably, that becomes a performance thing - and the shot becomes a simple portrait. Perhaps I work too much with performance, but perhaps an idea of the photographer not being part of the story - and you undoubtedly are, when your subject fixes his gaze on you - is old hat, and belongs to a documentary idea that the world has left behind; nevertheless, that engagement pushed an absence of authenticity into this shot: he knows you're shooting, and so what he is at this moment is perhaps less real.

My first reaction was that I wanted to know more of his environment - and then, of course, from the posters on the lamppost, and the newspaper box (?), it is clear enough. People, I think, don't exist in isolation - a difficulty I have with more portraits. People are part of their environment, and both contribute to it and belong to it; and without it, however battered and entrancig their face, I find them rather meaningless, perhaps. I'm not sure, as I write, that that's anything to be proud of.

This might well be the most interesting shot in this challenge, however - I'm just expressing the thoughts that spring to mind from it - and anything that prompts thoughts like that has to be a good photograph. I just want more documentary (which we get little enough of here), and less 'study' - of which we get far too much, though rarely with this kind of love.

Into The West
by Terramar

Comment:
November 20th, by any chance? I don't see the point of putting this into this challenge with that other shot sitting on the front page all week. Whilst may people (obviously, from that previous challenge result) find this stuff attractive, I find it cloyingly sentimental. It has a contrived adge that, for me, simplifies the idea (and ideal) of relationships, and is actually, I beloieve, damaging, in that it encourages people to think that this kind of dreamy sunset gush is an attainable reality; its like people with flawless 'perfect' bodies having sex without producing any sticky mess - just like the worst kind of movies.