Abandoned Hope
by jerowe

Comment:
From the Critique Club:

First of all I would like to say that you have a very beautiful model and I would love to have the opportunity to shoot her. This shot begs for my what I like what I don't like treatment so here goes...

What I like: Compositionally, this shot is right on. You have your model in one third of the frame. This doesn't exactly follow the rule of thirds but is very close and works well. I love how you have your model posed and her expression. I love how it appears that your lighting surrounds or floods the area that the model is in, however...

What I don't like: This to me looks a tad bit overprocessed. Please remember that this is only my opinion and I'm a bit old school when it comes to post processing. The circle of light around your model almost looks to perfect as if it was created in the p/p. The fade off from lit to shadow is too dramatic. It doesn't look real. Your model also looks a little plastic. This is probably a result of the neat image. I don't know exactly why, it may be a combination of the lighting and the use of neat image, but her clothes don't look 'real'. There is a bit of fuzziness to them that makes it look surreal. For this critiquer, this doesn't work all that well. The last thing I would have to say I was drawn to in a negative way is her eyes. They look dull or dead. Even the slightest bit of catch light in her eyes would have added a lot of feeling to the shot.

Overall, it's a nice shot. With a little less in the post processing and a touch of catch light this could be a great shot.

Yours
TC

Taste Like Chicken.
by Bullie

Comment:
That's just wrong in so many ways! I love it!
TC

Lookin' for a wee bit o' luck...
by DemonLlama

Comment:
I don't think fertalizer will help...
TC

Honey, Where's The Dog?
by idnic

Comment:
There is so much wrong with your title that I will not go down that alley...
TC

The Devil In the Flames (Look Closely)
by jusdino4it

Comment:
If you have to tell me to look closely, you have not created a Ribbon winning entry...
TC

Color wheel
by jaxed

Comment:
I don't know why I like this one so much. I'm not a fan of abstract type images but this one works very well at least for this voter...
TC
Edit to add... Just as I clicked post, I noticed that your border is not even...

Break 'em!
by jdannels

Comment:
Sweet! I just wish more of the model were in focus then this would be perfect!
TC

Heron Take-Off
by Dr.Confuser

Comment:
This would work if only some part of the image were in focus...
TC

And the Light Emerged from His Hand
by palmero

Comment:
From the Critique Club:

What I like: I love how you have combined breaking the rules with following the rules. You have a great third line with your model (youself) on the rightmost vertical third. You broke the rules by putting your horizon right on the center horizontal line. This works very well! Good tones in the sunset.

What I don't like: This shot is extremely contrasty! I would love to be able to see more detail in the horizon line instead of the almost solid black. You're highlites are almost blown out while your shadows are almost completely black. I wanna see what is there but it ain't there. Nothing here seems to really be in focus. It might be, but it don't look like it is. This is part of the downfall of such a harsh backlighting. It also (the backlighting) makes it look oversharpened.

Why didn't it score better? This challenge was about shadows. You have shadows, but they are overwhelmed by the darkness of the silhoutte of the background. The first thing I thought when I saw this shot wasn't shadow but glowing silhouette of the subject. If you look at the higher scoring shots in this and the other shadow challenges, you will see that the shadow plays a much more prominent role in the shot.

Hope this helps,
TC

A shadow of me
by sarsonuk

Comment:
From the Critique Club:

Though this shot fits the challenge perfectly well, I believe that it suffers from a lack of an interesting subject. There is nothing in the shot that can hold your eye and keep you interested. There are no compositional elements that can take the place of an interesting subject. All there is is some harshly lit sand and the shadow. There are some features in the sand that could help the shot in different lighting. The smooth rolling textures at the top or the roughed up textures at the bottom. However they need the nice lighting that comes from early morn or late evening light. Another thing that may have helped this shot would have been to make the shadow more interesting. Not just you standing there taking the picture. Perhaps you sitting on the beach or in a running pose. Something to take the shot to the next level.

I have many shots in my port from challenges that even though they met the challenge perfectly scored pretty low. Sometimes we have to be able to look through the challenge description and ask ourselves does this photo stand on it's own...

Yours
TC