Morning Rain
by gloda

Comment:
An excellent motion image - strong feelings, accurate. You'll obviously suffer from the pedants, let alone the pin-sharpists, but your tonality certainly speaks of morning to me. Strong work.

Morning Mist
by michael_p

Comment:
Good stuff. I wonder, for once, whether a small border of either white of black might just serve to separate this from the enveloping grey of the site background? The subtletly of your tonal work loses out a little against that. I like the gentleness here, both of subject, of photographic approach, and most especially in our over-burnt community, of your processing.

The Early Bird
by Kronus

Comment:
Givem the (admittedly false) general reputation as a night bird, this seems an odd choice for a 'morning' challenge. Very nice shot, though.

Final Flight of the Alarms
by Sebi

Comment:
I like this - though normally such wacky set-up shots are the most complete turn-off, there's something about this. Not sure what it is. Could be the sheer blandness of the colours, the cieling tiles, the small net curtain - such truly suburban elements - which give it that aspect of extraordinary moments is absolutely ordinary worlds. Interesting (my highest compliment, perhaps).

As the sun rises in the fog
by fstopopen

Comment:
Preusming your aim was to capture the rays of sun in the mist, then you have achieved that - however the highlights behind the tree and the terribly white sky to the left cause too amny problems to be overcome by that good point. Framing is good though.

Grandmother
by pacpinto

Comment:
Good. The twisted finger is especially expressive.

Robert
by AlexSaberi

Comment:
Good work - I hope the guy isn't actually as superficial as this implies - 'look at my muscles!'; Hell, imagine buying shirts ... But that is evidently your point; the man whose shoulder is larger than his head.

Painter
by Zoomdak

Comment:
Amusing that the scene (s)he is painting is so like those beach-rock images we see over and over again here :-) Interesting that one can't quite be sure of the sex of your subject.

Rockman
by beaflies

Comment:
This is good - your choice to emphasise the extraordinary/bizarre muscle structure of the shoulder works well, and the bluntness and strength of the fingers; hands are, one would say, even more expressive than faces: we're used to composing our expressions, both as photographers and as the photographed - but life and experience show more in the hands. The subtlety of the missing finger end, the half-lit nature of it, just adds impact.

Out to Pasture
by Neil

Comment:
ex officio Critique Club

An almost defiantly DPC image - and, as seems the general case, that guarantees you a strong finish, without quite breaking the higher echelons. What it is about those images that the site takes to it's heart still mystifies me completely.

I could take few guesses at the reasons for this one's missing the ribbons, but they'd be just that - guesswork, and you've been here long enough not to need my guidance in that, Neil.

Nice - the word used advisedly - landscape work seems to me a combination of factors: in the main, research, fortune, and patience. Research (and, obviously, an eye) to find the location, to know how the light might strike it, to see a composition; the fortune to be able to return to it at the right time, and to be granted the right weather, and the patience to wait for those opportunities. But really good photography should surely show us more than that - to my mind, should allow us a wondow on a world we hadn't quite considered, that hadn't struck us, that, most simply, we hadn't seen before...

Now, that's not a request for outrageous originality from every single photograph. Well, actually, it is - but not in the way that this place seems to understand originality, which is best summed up as 'new tricks for new dogs'. I absolutely believe that each one of us experiences our world in a different way, that the sum of our experiences make each and every one of us fundamentally different people, and that therefore what we percieve as worthy of record varies from each to the other. Therefore, any truly committed photograph should be a work of staggering originality, as no-one else would have thought it worth the press of the shutter.

And my problem with this shot, and this presentation and processing of this shot, is precisely that - that I've seen it before. Maybe not quite so dark as this one, and maybe with a better balance of foreground tree and building, and maybe with with less plain dodge and burn work, and maybe with the house less enveloped in the horizon line, but fundametally the same thing. It seems only to be a technical exercise - not any kind of expressive endeavour - and a technical exercise carries the expectation not only of the existence of an assessment of success, but actually of the necessity of that assessment. It is as though there are boxes to be ticked, and once those have been implacably completed, then surely we must have a perfect image, no?

But what if the intent showed through - somewhere in the tiniest details of composition, of scenic assessment, in the choices made in post-processing? What if there's really a little tell-tale sign that this isn't a work of the heart, but of the head?

I don't know where this goes. I don't know that I'm right to say there must be a heartfelt committment to one's subject, that these burnt images only pander to the masses here, that I'm right in seeing landscape photography simply as crowd-pleasing (and I wouldn't knock that) - pleasing the crowd is something we all resort to.

But you asked for a critique).