Two Sicilian donkeys (actually jennies, they're both girls) wearing red halters with brass fittings. Flower is on the left, Alice on the right. Both decided to shake bugs out of their ears at exactly the same moment!
pp: RAW-TIFF, crop, shadow/highlights, clone out fencing, exposure, contrast, resize, usm, sharpen edges, save for web
Statistics
Place: 143 out of 169 Avg (all users): 5.3759 Avg (commenters): 6.7500 Avg (participants): 5.2571 Avg (non-participants): 5.4930 Views since voting: 985 Views during voting: 248 Votes: 141 Comments: 8 Favorites: 0
This is a rather difficult challenge to 'critique' because of the simple nature of the challenge itself. You were asked to create a photo that represents another user's 'name' on the site, which really limits you to creativity. Sometimes it's easier to shoot an image and then try to find a username that fits the photo rather than the other way around. Meeting the challenge is a given in this competition, so you can't really get dinged for that. Since not meeting the challenge isn't really possible here, what do you have left to be judged on?
In any challenge, if you spend some time looking around the site, the images that score highest ALWAYS have some sort of special appeal, whether it be visual, emotional, or technical. Your photo scored a 5.3, which is what I consider to be a mediocre result. When photos score in this range, the collective vote is telling you that there is nothing really wrong with your image, but there is also nothing compelling about it. No one found it offensive while no one found it outstanding either. Just over 80% of the votes you received were in the 4-5-6 range which is definitely middle of the road.
As I look at your image, I don't find anything compelling about it. Harsh sunlight is generally not a great time to shoot photos of anything because of the high contrast it creates. I do find donkeys interesting in general, but you really have to work them to get intriguing images. The comments you received in this challenge don't really offer you anything either except for the one that mentions the same harsh light situation I suggested in this critique. If these two donkeys are truly what you set out to photograph for this challenge, you might have fared better by visiting them early in the morning or late in the afternoon where some shade or overcast weather conditions could have provided a more inviting light situation for your camera. You might have also tried to coax them closer to you where you could fill the frame with their faces and create a higher overall impact rather than just having the two of them standing in in a bare spot in their landscape.
Photography, in a serious sense, is a game of time and patience. You need a lot of both to consistently create images that inspire awe and wonder :)
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