Autumn Dreaming
by havy2008

Comment:
from the Critique Club

I'm intrigued by this approach, as much because it has all the feel of a full colour photograph as a duotone. In that sense, your toning is perfect for the image - catching just the right kind of shade of orange/brown, however accidental it is according to your notes.

In such a clean composition, it's inevitable that the little white blob thing should attract so much attention - I think the voters need something to pin their comments on, and that gives them a direction, because there isn't actually so very much else here to comment on:

All the technical details are fine - focus, detail, light, composition and so on are all fine. Arguably one might make something of the darker area to image left bottom, or that the highlights to image right might be over-exposed, but the progression of light across the image is smooth enough for those not to be major problems I think.

It's perhaps just that the overall imapct isn't so great that has left this scoring only just above the average. There isn't quite the immediacy of texture to the leaf, nor is it quite close enough to show us the fine detail that makes a macro of such things appealling, and that would take it into the higher scoring territory of the 6's. Don't misunderstand this - I think it's a porefectly fine image, but it just lacks that zing, or that difference, or that pow that you need to score heavily here.

Curly, Puffy, Foxy...
by librodo

Comment:
The comment below was made through the Critique Club, after I'd had about seven images in a row from a previous challenge - 'the 80's'

I completely failed to realise that this image was from a different challenge - but I think it's interesting whether or not I said anything useful under those conditions, so I've left it to stand.

Flower Girl
by gwendy

Comment:
You don't want to know just how many of my personal pet hates you've managed to get into this one photograph - I'm afraid, just about everything about this. Obvously technically competent, but this really hits all the alarm bells for me; I'll try to be good and not knock you just for producing something I don't like ... 6

Strawberry
by Sammie

Comment:
Reminds me slightly of my first ever challenge entry here, all those months ago. I wonder how it's scoring - mine bombed ;-) Nicely and simply done, all the technical elements well executed ... but it's difficult to get more excited about it: really is, just a strawberry.

The Gift
by manic35

Comment:
Love the halo of brown from the wood around the box. Quite like the trick of it all, but find it lacking a certiain dynamic - not sure exactly what - perhaps its just that your prinarly point of interest is actually a white nothing: even with that haze/smoke, just doesn't quite carry the sense of mystery for me. Really nice attempt though, and certainly works for the challenge.

Blue Eyes
by Nazgul

Comment:
Great lighting - very nicely executed. Strong use of the compositional restrictions of this format too, and fine detail and all the rest is there. I would wish the eye reflections of your big softlight weren';t directly over her pupils - gives the weirest sense of her being blind to me - eyes need that depth of black in the pupil to carry their message, and only the slightest change of angle would move that reflection to somewhere more appealing. I'll be intrigued to see how far that affects your score - how far people really notice, and how far people subconsciously notice.

Profile
by naomik

Comment:
Very nice - both black and white seems slight overkill in your framing, I think. For the image itself, the colour repro seems excellent, and the detailing is strong and well executed. I like how we see a patch of real flesh, and the mess of the pancake make-up. Fun shot, and well done indeed.

Petals
by Bud

Comment:
Whilst the purple shade is well reproduced, the yellow of the stamens looks dull and flattenend. Works fairly well for the crop, but not particularly strong composition; perhaps the light is just too ambient, lacking any sense of direction and therefore not helping to communicate shape and texture much.

Kangana
by jpeters

Comment:
Has a certain strangth of dynamism and evident movement, though it feels constricted by the square crop requirement - it feels rather that you've forced the image into the format than that the image itself needed to be presented in this way. The flash seems too direct also - takes away much sense of depth from the photo.

.:xx:.
by visaksen

Comment:
Red is so tricky in internet land - just doesn't reproduce well: there's such a fine line between saturation and clipping, and there's always noise. That just adds a strange element to a strange enough photograph already; not sure what I make of it really.