Gas Works
by langdon

Comment:
Only my sixth critique, and I get your image? Er, of course I'm not intimidated...! ;-)

Greetings from the Critique Club!

First, let me say that I am not a professional or even a very good amature photographer, so you may want to take my comments with a grain of salt.

I love the silhouettes (although as mentioned before, the leaning aspect is there) and think that they are quite interesting looking. There is a lot of detail there, which is very nice. The crop works very well. However I do think that what could have made this a vastly improved image is the sky. I would have loved to see more of the brighter blue and less of the grey blue, for a greater contrast. As it is, your picture is a very good one technically but it doesn't seem to have the impact that many of your other photos have.

I hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Vesper
by Brin

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

First, let me say that I am not a professional or even a very good amature photographer, so you may want to take my comments with a grain of salt.

Meeting the Challenge: Well, I'd certainly say this qualifies. :-)

Composition: Wow. I've never seen a photo that so wonderfully balances foreground and background. The diagonal line of the land works very well too. I am very impressed by the composition and this is what makes the photo really stand out for me.

I'm assuming this is an accident (if not, wow), but the silhouette has a couple of pieces of the foreground cutting across and it looks very much like the collar of a jacket or something. It's really cool.

Color: Three words: to die for.

Camera Work / Post Processing / Lighting: Everything's in focus that should be and with a picture like this... it really makes it amazing. I love the crop, and the contrast and saturation look great to me. As mentioned previously, a burn on some of the highlights in the front might have helped. (This is the ONLY thing I see about this photo that I don't love 100%) I love the way the light from the background is balanced with the shadows.

Title: I don't completely understand but am thinking it has a relation to the evening, and that totally works with this photo. In any case I think it is a good title because it doesn't state something obvious about the picture (letting the picture speak for itself).

Image Dimensions and Filesize: No problems here.

Misc / My subjective thoughts: Wow. Just wow. I am so delighted I got to critique this photo. Have you considered making it available as a print? (I'd recommend the burning and maybe a border color closer to the tan of the foreground if you do.)

I hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Beautiful
by JOHNBOY1970

Comment:
Whoooooo!!!

A single half-filled glass, double the medium
by GeckoZ

Comment:
I don't know why, but I felt that the grain really worked - probably I find it nice with the monochromaticness. It was a neat change from most of the other entries.

Hawaiian Delight
by DigiFotoBuddy

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

First, let me say that I am not a professional or even a very good amature photographer, so you may want to take my comments with a grain of salt.

Meeting the Challenge: Macro, definitely. It seems abstract to me - I can identify it as fruit but not a specific type of fruit. However I do wonder if others would be able to identify it better than I did.

Composition: I like how the main circle figure is not centered. I would like to see how this might turn out with a tighter crop - especially to eliminate the seeds at the bottom, which I feel detract from the seeds at top. Also, this would have eliminated some of the surrounding peach colored area, and that might not be a bad thing as this area lacks the texture which I feel can be important to a macro shot.

Lighting: No real problems here - I like how there is a definite shine to the seeds but the highlights are not overpowering.

Color / Title: A good color scheme - it makes me think of how I might decorate a sun room at a beach house. The title certainly adds to that feeling.

Camera Work: It looks like you do have some focus issues. The front seeds, the main point of the picture are decently focused but again, there is so much else that isn't, and a tighter crop could have helped matters here as well.

Post Processing: No photographer's comments so I can't speak to this area.

Image Dimensions and Filesize: The filesize should be as close to 150kb as possible to minimize compression artifacts although without checking the properties I would not have been able to tell.

Misc / My subjective thoughts: A lot of this repeats what has already been said so I am sorry if this is less helpful than I would like. I think that overall you have done a good job with capturing a fresh, "hawaiian delight"ful image, and if it weren't for the focusing/crop issue this may have done better in the challenge.

I'll add this: I hate seeds and fleshy bits of fruit next to seeds (yes I am strange) and wow did this picture make me go eww! A few of the macro entries did this to me. This is not a criticism, but an additional comment to how you have captured the spirit of the fruit.

I hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Limburg underground 9
by skyone

Comment:
This one is my favorite. I love green!

Extinguished but not Forgotten
by riot

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

First, let me say that I am not a professional or even a very good amature photographer, so you may want to take my comments with a grain of salt.

Meeting the Challenge: You did excellently here. You definitely captured the spirit of the original, paying attention to details such as the border.

Title: This is where you put your own spin on it. The title defines the image well, and the recently extinguished look made this tribute photo uniquely yours.

Composition / Color: You said you wanted to show the inner light of the matches, rather than making them look cold and dead. You definitely achieved your goal. The red glow is what makes this photo have a strong emotional impact, which, in my opinion, takes it further than the original.

I feel like maybe the matches should be a bit closer together and higher in the picture, as they were in the original. However, your version emphasizes the negative space more, which is a good contrast to the warmth of the matches. Also I can see how it would have been hard to crop it so that there is less space on the top.

Lighting: The smoke seems to overtake the matches just a little - maybe less light on the smoke would have helped this. But I don't feel that this detracted from your overall image.

Camera Work: As others have said, the left match is out of focus. Other than that, everything's amazing. I loved looking at the pictures of your setup and I am in awe at the time and effort you put into this.

Post Processing: You definitely got what you were going for. The blue-colored smoke definitely reminds us of the original while the black background provides perfect contrast.

Image Dimensions and Filesize: Filesize could have been a bit bigger but I don't notice anything where this is a problem.

Misc / My subjective thoughts: This is a very detail-oriented photo - one thing I noticed was the border. While in the same style as the original, the different color adds to the relative warmth of your photo.

I have to say, you did an amazing job. I think the strength of this image is in the emotional pull - the "heroic symbolism" you were going for is definitely what you got.

I hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Mountain Laurel
by scottieprecord

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

First, let me say that I am not a professional or even a good amature photographer, so you may want to take my comments with a grain of salt. In addition, you're my very first critique, so keep the saltshaker handy ;-)

Meeting the Challenge: To my eye you met the challenge, but others said that your photo was underexposed. I decided to go to the forums for help, and found this::
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You need to understand that fundamentally low-key means there is a broad range of tonality on the left side of histogram in the shadows, but not on the right side in the highlights. The left side will have a fairly high number of pixels spread throughout the whole range of shadows. The right side will have only narrow spikes. The image therefore is properly exposed, it simply lacks any tonality on the highlights side of the histogram.

The highlight, or right side of the histogram of a typical low-key image will have a few well defined spikes in it. That is what I believe fotoman_forever is talking about when he says, "a lighting technique that emphasizes the highlighted areas". In other words, there are highlights but there is little or no tonality in them at all. You see it all the time in low-key where an image has bright, well defined edges but no highlight tones.

The most important ingredient of low-key is a full range of tones on the left side of the histogram, sometimes with spikes but those spikes generally occur on the far left side. That means you see a lot of detail in the shadows and maybe some very strong near-black tones. That makes a low-key image look "powerful" and that is why it is sometimes used in male portraits. That is also, I believe, what is meant in the book where it says, "...shift mid-tones into shadow areas." You are taking mid-tones and shifting them left. What is important to remember is that tonality in low-key images is in the shadows regardless how it gets there. In the camera that can be as simple as metering just off a very bright area of a scene to create bright edges and capture shadow tones.

This is where low-key differs from "underexposed". Underexposed images are low contrast, lack tonality and often have no true highlights or shadows. Looking at their histogram you would see spikes on the left side with large gaps between where there are no pixels at all. That is because they lack shadow tonality. Some might argue that "underexposed" images are low-key and they may even be right but, lacking tones, they just aren't very good low-key images.
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Here is an image somewhat similar to yours that you may want to look to as an example:

Again, I do not see a problem here but I do not have as much knowledge about the difference between low-key and underexposed.

Composition: I think this is a huge strong point for your image. I love how you mirrored the same basic shape, the double-oval, several times. The positioning of the shapes gives the image a great depth, as it does not show matching shapes head-on. I like the crop. A looser crop on the top and right may have helped balance out the negative space at the bottom left, but then again it might have left your image too centered. I am a huge fan of the background, as it is free from distractions, drawing all the attention to the flower.

Lighting / Color: For me, the colors are a HUGE draw for this photo. Not only do the two colors work well together, but the blue-purple surrounds the other color on each figure, lending continuity to the repeated double-oval shapes. In addition to any problems with low-key vs underexposed, I feel that the shadow on the left figure may be a little distracting, because it breaks up the continuity of the colors, but this does not seem like a huge problem.

Camera Work / Post Processing: Since there are no photographer's comments, I can't say what this is from, but the image should be less blurry. You can try this thread for info about focusing macro shots, or if this occured in post processing, try to find the balance between reducing noise and keeping details.

Title: The title flows nicely off the tongue and I believe it fits the photo very well.

Misc / My subjective thoughts: I really admire what you have done with keeping the background incredibly distraction-free as that is one thing I have not yet been able to achieve and it can be so important to the look of a photo. I've done some nit-picking about your photo, but my feeling is that if this had been in focus, I would have loved it to death. With the blur, I see it as a photo with so much potential but ultimately not reaching that potential. However, it is still a very pleasant image for me to look at - very soft, delicate, and peaceful.

I hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.
Thank you for being my first critique!

edit: Looking at some of your other pictures, I'm thinking maybe you did the blurryness deliberately? If so, it definitely added to the soft and delicate nature, but probably didn't help the score.

Message edited by author 2006-04-04 14:08:44.

Creation
by JH

Comment:
I absolutely adore this idea!

Nobody Want's a Yellow...
by tfarrell23

Comment:
Hehehe! Red and pink are SO much better. If people wanted me to share I'd often try to give away the yellow ones!