Oooooh!! With ridges!!
by vawendy

Comment:
This is fantastic. I'd love to see this with a ribbon at the end of the week... Nice work :)

Breakout
by DistantColours

Comment:
I wish I had taken the time to look at the photos in this challenge. This is a fantastic concept and I guess everyone else agreed... nice work :)

H20verdrive
by MattO

Comment:
Top 10! Nice finish... The comments you received here are quite entertaining.... lol

Gentle Spirit
by KristinaG

Comment:
Birds make such great subjects for photos... This is definitely one of the more unique bird photos I have seen in a while. I love the composition and I suppose the element of this image that grabs me the most is the lighting. The warmth of that light is what makes this shot unusual... 10 from me :)

Harp Seal in the Wild
by KarenNfld

Comment:
Great photo... here's a perfect example of a well-executed square composition with the point of interest dead center in the frame. The tilt of the seal's head creates a fantastic dynamic for this composition. I had originally voted this shot a 9 but upon further inspection I can't find anything that should keep it from being a 10. Great work :)

Bald Eagle
by missysue78

Comment:
This is an excellent portrait of a bald eagle. The composition is fantastic and the background helps set the bird off nicely. I typically don't comment much on the technical aspects of a photo but this one has a couple very noticeable elements that stand out for me. Since I have a little background in framing, this particular composition is going to run into a minor problem if you decide to mat and frame the print. The beak is going to be right up on the edge of the mat unless you have some additional image available that was cropped off to make this composition. There is also a prominent halo around the bird that may be a result of post processing either as a sharpening artifact or possibly from adding additional blur to the background. At any rate, I gave this photo a 9 because I like the subject and overall approach to the final image... nice work :)

heian
by bspurgeon

Comment:
I love this image and I hope others in this competition can take a moment to explore it as much as I have. It's fantastic in more ways than I can really put into words myself. I have come back to look at this image several times and I see something new and/or different each time I look. This might possibly be my personal favorite of this challenge... Great work :)

Ric
by HarveyG

Comment:
This is a great character portrait... very nicely executed and the black and white treatment adds a lot of feeling and texture to this image. I'm a personal fan of this type of shot and yours is one of the best I have seen lately. When presenting a shot like this to a DPC challenge, it's important to find a way to connect the viewer to the image. Even though I don't know this person or have any link to him, this photo makes me want to know him. Drawing in an unconnected viewer is hard to do, but I think you have done it well here... a definite 10 from me... nice work :)

Stand The Test of Time
by hesitant

Comment:
This is one of my favorite photos in this challenge. The composition and framing of the lighthouse is excellent. I can't really offer you any suggestions for improvement, but I might offer an alternative toning idea along with some support for the idea...

The warm toning you chose for this image looks nice but it doesn't seem to fit the mood of the image. As I look into this image, I feel a sense of cold coupled with some possible wind. For me, that feeling conflicts with the warm toning. I personally think this photo might be equally, if not more, appealing with a cooler tone in the blue range somewhere while still maintaining the mono/duotone concept. Just some food for thought... Keep up the good work!

Delicate
by Adz

Comment:
I'm not voting in this challenge so I'm not passing along a score, but this photo has missed the mark when it comes to Edward Weston. I can't recall ever seeing a Weston image that was done with a shallow depth of field. That was definitely one of the hallmarks of his style... deep depth of field...

Addendum per request:

In the spirit of the Edward Weston challenge, I would have probably scored this photo a 3 or maybe a 4. In my humble opinion, as I stated earlier, this photograph missed the mark quite a bit when considering the style of Weston. While it's mainly because of the shallow depth of field, it goes a bit beyond that. I don't believe that Weston would have chosen this subject material either. (Once again, this is all MY personal opinion of what Weston might do based only on my experience with his images.) Weston worked a good bit with still life situations, but he seemed to always work with the subject in its entirety rather than taking an abstract view of the subject. His subject choices outside the realm of landscapes always seemed to focus on the beauty of interacting shapes and forms which created appealing harmonies within the composition. Your image here has some interesting shapes and forms but they don't seem to interact in any specific or special way.

In a free study, I might have given this photo a 5 or possibly a 6 depending on how I felt on that particular day :) I believe that your execution of this image was exactly what you wanted it to be, so you accomplished that part. As for appealing to me, the viewer, I'm not finding a personal connection or appeal in the subject or composition. If I was judging the photo on technical qualities alone, I would score it higher, but in my opinion, technicals are just a small part of photographic art. The subject choice and the photographer's approach to that subject is 85-90% of the goal. What this means from me is that there are a lot of photographs out there that are technically poor in some people's eyes that strike me as fantastic images. If the subject and theme of the image overwhelm me, the technicals don't seem to matter so much. When a photographer manages to captivate me with the subject and approach AND managed to be right on target in the realm of technical achievement, it's a sure winner in my book :)