Sunrise at St Peter's
by ladpupmoe

Comment:
From the Critique Club!

This is (mostly) a very nice image and the title fits it well! I love how you managed to capture the early morning feel with the sunrise clouds and the near silhouette of the tower!

The colors in the sky are very good as is the focus, both on clouds and tower.

The biggest downfall of this shot is the very shadowy part of the building that takes up so much of the bottom of the image. If you play around with contrast/brightness and levels, you may be able to bring out much more detail! Or (what I would have tried to do) you could change your angle and use a more powerful zoom to bring the tower closer, and make the sky even more prominent! (or in effect crop out most of the building by chosing a different camera angle.) I think that this would make a much simpler and more pleasing composition! I don't believe that you could crop this shot down and achieve the same thing because of the angle of the roof across the shot.

I DO like this shot a lot and am looking forward to seeing more of your work!
TC

Point Lobos
by ronners

Comment:
From the Critique Club

I just want to start by saying that this is a VERY impressive shot! The composition, focus and DOF are very nice! I love the way the clouds jump out of the sky! The detail in the water in the forground of the image is beautiful! All in all an excellent shot and well worth the score that you recieved!

Now, what would I do to make it better? (my opinion only of course...) First of all the frame is a little bit overpowering. I would rather see more of the detail (either outside of the crop, or as is but bigger with the current crop) of the picture itself. It's such a good shot, why put so much attention on the frame? Also, I am a HUGE fan of color! It seems to me that as beautiful a day as it was when this was taken, that there was an incredible blue sky! And unless there are pollution issues in the waters around that part of the California shoreline, the blues of the water must be quite marvelous also! I want to see those colors. Also I believe that this would make the clouds stand out even more than they do here!

Very nice work and I can't wait to see more in the future!
TC

Beautiful scene
by lovelyshot

Comment:
From the Critique Club

I'm glad I got to pull this shot from the hat. I didn't give it the best of comments during the challenge.

This is a very beautiful shot! The colors are gorgeous! The sun and it's reflection are blown out, but not to the point that it is terribly distracting. The silhouetted foreground and middle background only add to the shot and the hills in the background give it a profound sense of depth!

I'm sure that you noticed that there is a power line running right through the sky. Cropping it out would ruin the balance of the shot, the only challenge legal way around it would have been to move forward far enough that it was no longer in the shot. Now that the challenge is over you can use simple photoshop tools to remove the line, but please don't do things like this during the challenge...

All in all a very nice image, even though it doesn't truly fit the 'Still Life' challenge theme. I notice that this is your first entry into a challenge. Please do not be discouraged by a low first score as it is probably a result of the theme and not the quality of your image. I'm looking forward to your shots in the future!
TC

Pumpkins In a Row
by Zoomdak

Comment:
From the Critique Club

First of all, I'm glad that I pulled this picture out of the hat because even though I didn't give it a good comment during the challenge, I really enjoyed the shot!

Compositionally this is a very fun image. I like several things about the composition. The wall behind makes a nice frame for the subjects of the shot. The blue bench makes for a nice contrast with the oranges of the pumpkins, while cooridinating nicely with the fur and eyes of the beautifull cat! The contrast of the cat in the row of pumpkins also makes for a nice compositional touch! The only things I would try to change in the composition is the sticker still stuck to one of the pumpkins and a slightly different angle so that the ground could be cropped out of the bottom right corner. The sticker is pretty distracting (it took me several viewings to figure out that was what it was!) but the ground isn't so bad...

The colors in this shot are a little bit dull. If you play around with levels and saturations you can make it a little brighter. I like the colors involved though, they go together well!

All in all a very fun shot if not necesarily a 'still life' image!
TC

Reflections on Eternity
by dsidwell

Comment:
LOL I thought that this was a reflection off of another building hence my comments below! This is a very cool shot and demonstrates how much more of an impact a shot can have if you do something simple like rotate it! Keep up the good work and looking forward to seeing more!
TC

Light as a feather
by Bela45

Comment:
Very nice contrasts in colors and textures. Purple/Green Soft/Hard Round/Square Nature/Technology. Only thing I see wrong is it's not quite straight...
Great shot!
TC

Raise Your Glasses
by crabappl3

Comment:
Very tricky!!!
TC

Reserved Seating
by EddyG

Comment:
I really wish the backgound was lit better to bring out all the lovely details!
TC

In My Little Town
by TerryGee

Comment:
This looks like a very nice, cute little church house! How did you light this up? Car headlights? The colors seem to be very dull and uneven making me think that the lighting is inadequate... If you could reshoot this during the day I would love to see it!
TC

God is in the House
by Nazgul

Comment:
IMHO this shot is simply too dark. I would love to see more of the detail of what appears to be a very impressive building!
TC