Corn Rows at Dawn
by davidw

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

My first reaction when this shot came up was "Woh!". It really jumped out at me with the detail, beautiful coloring, and peaceful composition. It reminds me a lot of where I grew up, also in Minnesota, though corn is generally grown further south.

You were on the scene at a perfect time of day. The dawn lighting does a great job on illumination angle, coloring hues and shadowing, bringing out the depth of the scene. Additionally that is probably the only time of day you can catch that lovely fog/mist on what I assume is a river and faintly under the distant trees. Now if you could have enticed some deer to graze on the light green grassy area it would have been perfect, but that may be too much to ask for.

The S curve of the corn rows gives a very pleasing flow to the picture. This gentle rolling is continued with the curved branches and slightly hilly landscape. I like how the sun is peaking up from the treetop in the left corner. You have enough light to emphasize the sun without throwing off the lighting for the rest of the picture. Your bracketed exposure and Photomatix HDR processing probably helped you with that.

I do like the coloring of the sky, but the clouds are difficult to see. Since you used Photomatix and Topaz Adjust I think it would have been improved it a great deal by selecting the sky and increasing the dynamic range of it to bring out the clouds much more. I just recently found out you can use Topaz Adjust on selections rather than the entire picture. You did very well on brightness, contrast (other than clouds) and color adjustment.

I do not see excessive noise in the shot, but you did shoot at ISO 400. You used f/16 while shooting L glass on a scene that would not be affected much by a larger aperture, so you might have tried dropping to ISO 100 and f/8 for an even better picture, at least with any enlargement. You have fairly slow shutter speed also, but since I'm sure you used a tripod and there is no motion in the shot you would not have benefited by increasing the shutter speed.

The almost letterbox extreme landscape crop works well here, allowing you to get maximum horizontal image while allowing you to have "rule of thirds" lines separating the sky, middle land and trees, and foreground fields. You do lose some allowable pixels that way, but it allows you to increase the definition in the remaining picture.

So in summary, this is an excellent shot that I can only see improved by some sky definition and, next time hire some deer. ;-) Please PM me for any clarification or discussion.

stop swimming and start flying ...
by carljacquemyn

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

This is a good catch of a very cute duckling learning to fly. I see it's just your second entry. I think it's a good improvement over your first one and you scored well with it being in about the top third.

As one commenter said my initial first reaction was that the duckling occupies too little of the available space and that there is too much blank "negative" space around it. I do get the point of the ripples spreading out from the center, but I feel the picture would have had more impact by sacrificing the ripple effect and cropping for more detail in the duckling. I agree with your comments about not wanting to lose the splashes and not wanting it to be moving out of the picture, so perhaps leaving it with a centered position but cropping some from all sides would help bring out the duckling and get rid of parts that don't add to the picture.

I also agree with the commenters who said it did not meet the challenge. This duckling looks like it's far from quitting. You tried to use the title to shoehorn it into the challenge, but from personal experience I can tell you that rarely works well. This may have worked in another challenge or perhaps the monthly free study, but in the free study you had better have a great shot to have any chance at all. With that in mind you are fortunate to get the score you got.

You did well on the focus and the sharpness with just enough motion in the wings to show the movement was perfect. I don't understand the shutter speed listed as 166.

Keep it up. You're doing great for your 2nd entry. I would recommend you start commenting on other people's pictures. You will find it helps you as much as others. Sometimes newcomers don't feel qualified to critique others shots, but as long as you give honest, non-hurtful feedback it will be fine. Try to keep your comments given and received count in proportion. Your one comment here seemed a little defensive. We're only trying to help each other here. Please PM me if you wish to discuss this critique further.

Fish anyone?
by docjonny

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

This is definitely a colorful shot, and the fruit and vegetables look very fresh and appealing despite the comment about the olives. I love the colors produced by the wide variety of delicious looking produce.

I think the f3.8 hurt the depth of field a little making the layout not as sharp overall with this close shot as my taste would prefer.

I do have some issues with the fish. The glaze on the eye and the shininess of the skin make it appear to be not as fresh as the rest of the food. You may have been able to correct that with a polarizing filter and some lighting corrections. I know you can't keep fish long without them getting that glazed look in the eyes.

Personally I would have preferred the fish not being so tight in the corner, especially its face, and having some vegetables around the top-left part of the picture.

I do like the clumped layout of the vegetables which looks more realistic than if it was all tossed together and laid out more randomly.

The subtle frame works well here. I haven't used frames myself, but I do like them when well done. Good job, and I'll come to your house for dinner anytime!

Shakespeare
by VitaminB

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

This is my first CC comment, since I joined today after seeing a forum thread about it. I'm glad I got this one since you didn't get many comments yet. Hopefully it will be helpful to you.

The centered composition works here, though portrait mode may have worked better than landscape mode, especially if you could have gotten all of her in the shot. You got a very sharp image of the owl without having the appearance of over-sharpening. The fine hairs coming off the side emphasize the sharpness of the shot. She really stands out against the lovely soft green background. Your f2.8 really helped out here to make the bird the only subject of the picture. The coloring and white balance are excellent. I like how the shading in the background foliage (if not dodge and burn) gives a mild vignette effect.

You mentioned she is blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other, but in the picture I see hardly anything at all in the eye sockets. I'm assuming she still does have both eyeballs. Changing the lighting may have been difficult given the circumstances, but perhaps in postprocessing you could have selected the eyes and worked with them to bring out some of the faint detail, even if it's evidence of her blindness. This is an instance of when bracketing exposure and merging different shots may have also helped you.

The face of the owl appears very flat, though not knowing a Bard Owl it may be that flat. I'm wondering if you could have brought out some more depth by carefully doing selections and brightness/contrast adjustments on parts of the face, or with careful blending of the bracketed exposure mentioned above. Maybe some slight selective lightening of the dark under-feathers would have helped also.

Thank you for the brief history of Tommy. This is a very nice shot that ended up in the middle of the scoring range. I think with some minor changes you could have increased the score by a full point or more.

[ETA] I just looked at this on a different computer and monitor and it looks much different here. On the plus side I see much more definition in the eyes, better facial contours and I think the underbelly is a little lighter. On the minus side the lovely green background I saw before has much more of a yellow tint and I don't see as much definition in the feathers. I guess that goes to show how images can look very different depending on equipment. Now I have to figure out which is more accurate.

Message edited by author 2009-06-09 23:44:20.

Kauai-bird-FINAL
by sfalice

Comment:
I loved how TA brought out the color.

Bicycle
by bmartuch

Comment:
I like all the old fashioned looking objects in here. I also like the other world reflected in the window and I'm glad I don't see your reflection in it.

Walking alone
by bmartuch

Comment:
I love the scene and the old woman really is the focal point. I just wish she was walking our direction. I like the processing.

Window Sill
by bmartuch

Comment:
Lovely find. Very nice window with a very European feel to it. I like the high key wall.

The Old Truck
by BAMartin

Comment:
Imagining what the original looks like this looks like an excellent rescue of an otherwise deletable picture. I love how you pulled out the detail in this one. Since this is still continuing on I'll have to pull out a few of our May Europe trip pictures and post them, since I didn't get into any challenges with them.

Awakening - non IR-edited
by colorcarnival

Comment:
You turned a fairly boring shot into something spectacular. Good job! And thanks for listing the settings. There are so many settings in TA I wondered how we would list them if using other than provided presets.