FREE-RANGE SNAIL
by Duke Deltree

Comment:
I try to be open-minded with challenge interpretations, but this one I fear I really cannot see. A kind of interesting photograph though, for all that - just a touch too simply odd for my taste. 4

Surounded By Flowers
by dirkjan_denelzen

Comment:
I'd have liked for there to be more flowers - this way they're perhaps more of an occasional intrusion than a framing device. I also wonder whether you might not have placed that fountain slightly differently within that frame of flowers - there's rather a lot of open water, and it doesn't have the interest to hold the eye, for me. Approaching a good shot though.

Framed
by ivash

Comment:
Good shot. The stone-work generally seems to lack a little punch - I would personally have pushed it a little harder with curves or something, just to bring out the contrast there more. That said, that quality does allow the compositional thing with the tree to come out well. Can't quite see it on the front page, but I couldn't say why it doesn't deserve to be there. very good, actually. 9

Street Play
by jjbeguin

Comment:
Well this just has to be JJ. Very nice to see that more recent stuff, those detached candid studies, being combined with the architectural work we all know you so well for. I like the indignificance of this child against the loom of the archways, and the parallel disinterst of the child in his surroundings. Great balance. I suppose I should add that if this isn't JJ, then it's the best impression of someone's style I've ever seen.

Mind, Body and Spirit
by nico_blue

Comment:
From the Critique Club

It would be pointless of me to make remarks about any percieved technical problems with this shot - you're good enough to get this far, you're good enough to know for yourself what you like/don't like and why about it.

I'm no fan of hyper-stylised posed photography, nor of most studio work, but I have written what I think before on a couple of ribbon-winning shots and got slated for it, so am going to add nothing more.

Your ribbon must be your critique, I fear.

E

Who`s afraid of the big, bad, wolf?
by geewhy

Comment:
It's only on my third look at this shot that I've worked out the relevance of having a one-legged person here :-) Sense of mystery quite well done - rare here - though I'm not completely sure it's not over-done. I think having the figure closer might have paid off more - let us see the fear, rather than having to imagine it and work out what's happening. But the setting is ideal - the threatening woods are such a strong part of the darkness of true fairy-tales, and that alone puts this in the top bracket.

Le Petit Chaperon Rouge
by AmiYuy

Comment:
Great idea - not wildly original, but doeasn't matter at all - and well posed and located. Good composition, too - placement of girl in frame, choice of trees and movement of the path through frame, allowing enough 'forest' to be a major element. But it lacks mystery, unfortunately - lacks any kind of mystery for me. I cannot believe the wood would have been such a friendly sunny place as this. I think with a lot of selective darkening of certain areas - the ground, mainly, and the vanishing point of the path, that might have been achieved taking this as a base. It cries out for a more ghostly, threatening light. But good work, nonetheless.

The Moment I Caught The Tooth Fairy.
by jimika

Comment:
Intriguing set-up, for me badly let down by what looks like on-board flash - that very harsh shadow, mass of bright reflections. I think you've gone some way with editing to correcting that, but the effect on the figurine remains. Like the halo-effect, but really wish that light could have been softer, less brutally front-on. Having said that, the kind of mock-photojournalist black and white treatment is effective, quite dynamic ... and I guess that flash could be used to help that effect ... but given it's so obviously set-up, I think my original opinion holds. 6

Thumbelina - "A graceful butterfly constantly fluttered round her"
by ccraft

Comment:
The transition in to blur is so very sudden that one has to presume this is edited rather than shot that way - but it is effective, achieving what the shallow dof should do in complicated and distracting background situations. Crop and composition is pretty good, I just find the positioning of those leaves and flower a touch strange - as is the light there, really quite blank. The more I look, the less i think you needed to keep the dead space image left - it seems wasted, rather than influential.

Secret Garden
by mrorange002

Comment:
Does have a sense of the bizarre that perhaps truly belongs in a fairy tale. My first impression though, is more of a slightly weird commercial than of magic. Excellent technical work, almost as good as the make-up.