The Wide Blue Yonder
by Coley

Comment:
I've by-passed this one a couple of times - I guess I'd better try and write something about it :-) can't make up my mind, you see. The composition, other than those extra leaves/branches upper left and right about which I'm not sure, is fine, but I would say that perhaps the definition of those trees needs work - dodging/burning perhaps, something just to bring out the depth of light and shade there. The light you've chosen is really quite blank (which suits the compositional idea), but there's so little here to hold the eye in terms of texture, of variety of subject (the grass, the road and the sky are all near solid areas of colour). Perhaps it needs a deeper air of mystery, which at the moment is missing somewhat. 6

Storm Clouds
by flip89

Comment:
I think, and it's only opinion of course, that those clouds need to be darkened considerably to have the impact your title suggest: this way, it looks just like a bit of cloud cover on a sometimes sunny day. beyond that, this a good solid composition, nicely organised to balance the girl and the buildings. I might wish that there were more drama in it, more impact if you were to threaten the high scores. Given this scene, what would one do to give it that impact? First off, a lot of burning on those clouds, to add drama to them (see Heida's work with the burn tool for an idea), and I'm not sure that a touch of colour temperature correction wouldn't hurt - whole thing comes across as a little blue. 6

Black and Blue
by jrs915

Comment:
Refreshing - though I'm not sure you're going to get away with it in terms of the voters. Like the abstractness of it, though I find the composition of it a touch annoying - tiny bit obvious, if you follow me - and the light kind of blunt: whilst the darkness and the blue are intriguing, I can't help but wonder if a little fill (and only a little) might have added some three-dimensionality, some depth. Slightest feeling of missing details, but that miguth only be that light again. 7

At Any View
by Kylie

Comment:
Good clean shot, good detail, good use of the light. I'm not convinced about the crop - kind of get the sense that you wern't yourself, you know - the cutting off of the trees, the space image left. Certainly meets the challenge, for me - though in a way i think some voters might miss, especially those who don't give it the time. 6

Low tide
by caba

Comment:
Certainly meets the challenge, and follows the 'rules' - main subect not centre-frame, horizon not centre-frame. In simple terms of those rules, however, you've placed the rusted thing too far off-centre - I'd have allowed more room for it to breathe in the composition, brought it if you like onto the conjunction of the thirds lines, rather than in the bottom right box created by those lines.

However, all of that is incidental to the fact that the light is all wrong - very harsh, very contrasty, and giving you little help with the definition of these things, nor of the distance of the composition. There do seem to be textures in the metal plates worthy of interest, but this does little to show the detail of them. There's also a great deal of distracting detail in the shot, at least that adds little to my viewing of it: stones in the sand, other lumps and metal things around, the confusion of posts, people and the boat - which are not necessarily bad things, depending on your intention and organisation of those things, but for dpc they most definitely are. 4

Kintla Lake
by jodiecoston

Comment:
Nice shot indeed - especially like the way the cloud reflection blurs into the stony bed of the lake - a phenomenon I really enjoy in photographs. Have you had a look at it cropped to the horizon line, so that the hills, mountains and clouds only exist in reflection? A brief look masking off the top of frame suggests that that would make an exceptional composition (takes notes for future ...) :-)

One of few shots where the heavy summer shadows are used to good effect. 7

Rail Bridge
by TooCool

Comment:
That sky really hurts this image for me. Except for the positioning of the horizon, this a solid composition though, and the light and textures on the rails and ballast are well caught. Light on the treees and bushes is also good, which just makes the big white more of a pity. The fixes are quite easy - grad filters, or underexposing and bringing details back in post-pro, but for me it overwhelms this shot. 4

Around the Bend
by tfaust

Comment:
wonderful view - but oh for a more interesting moment of light! More shading on those rock faces would have added no end of drama to this shot - as it is, it's at best weakly illustrative. More light and shade would add spectacle, where this is really quite flat seeming.

In pure challenge terms, some foreground is needed to really emphasise dof, though of course in a sense of simple distance everything here is sharp. It's not bad work, but the light, the light ... 5

Time to rest.
by sixmacs

Comment:
Sensational sky, but that's about all. A feeling of tilt to the horizon, whether real or imagined, and at best an indistinctness of foreground doesn't help with the challenge thing - there may well be extraordinaryily deep dof, but you haven't really shown it. I would personally have tried to lighten some of the sky away from the sun - you already have the contrast with the brighter part, and the extreme top of frame seems to serve no useful purpose compositionally.

Harvest
by GolferDDS

Comment:
Yep. Meets challenge OK. Like the regularity of this - the composition suits the organisation of nature theme well, as does the cleanliness of the scene generally - nice trees, nice grass, nice tidy rolls of straw. Pretty good light, although the golden glow from shooting a bit later would take it completely into the bucolic, and perhaps add even more to the sentimental countryside feel. I can understand your cropping, with those clouds, but I nevertheless think you've included either too much or not enough sky for a really coherent balance of comsposition. 6