Still - 30 mins and counting
by Valdo

Comment:
Positives:
Composition is the strength of this image. Has good balance between objects and reflections given the near center framing of the water's edge. Wwell done. Very peaceful, traquil image.

Technicals:
Composition and content are excellent. Color is generally good. It is immediately obvious that some type of HDRI process has been applied... Shadow/Highlight in this particular case. With it you brought out great lighting and detail in the reeds. Shadow/Highlight is tricky to learn and use and sometimes leaves a surrealistic, unnatural look to the lighting from its narrowing of lighting differences. That has happened to a certain degree in this case. You didn't get any of the ugly haloing that we sometimes see but you pushed the limit. The best applications of these techniques are the ones least obvious. Your treatment is not bad, but could be better.

I'm on a sharpness sensitive monitor and can see "jaggies" typical of oversharpening. It is most apparent in the plant above and over the top of the bird.

The Challenge:
The shot selection of a tranquil natural scene fits the challenge quite nicely but some voters, like the one commenting it would be better if the water were "still", might lower the score for the ripples in the water. Your score of 5.9 is decent by DPC group standards and that likely comes from the strength of composition, subject selection and the final look of the reeds over its other technical aspects.

Suggestions:
You might want to back off on the sharpening a bit. Shadow/highlight, since it changes brightness and contrast, affects sharpening and makes it easier to oversharpen.

As an experiment try redoing this image with shadow/highlight to the point that the casual observer cannot tell that anything of that nature has been done to the image. It is a skill you will want to perfect for other images where a more natural look is desired.

Message edited by author 2007-04-25 18:26:54.

Beauty is in the eye of the bee-holder
by jonfrommk

Comment:
Positives:
Technicals are generally good, nice capture of the bee facing the camera. As an unprocesed image it is good.

This is an EXCELLENT image. It suffered more from ruleset limitations than anything else.

Technicals:
Sharpness excellent and it is focused beatifully on the bees "face". There are two important technical defects. One is the lack of detail in Bees dark "face". The other is that the background needs noise reduction. Yes, I realize that you had no control over either issue because the challenge was minimal. The centered framing was dictated by the nature of the challenge ruleset as well.

The Challenge:
Obviously meets the challenge.

I gave this image an 8. The group gave it a 5.7. Basically that means I agreed with the group assessment. That is because 5.7 is normally a slightly above average score for an image given by the group and 8 is an above average score from me. The overall DPC average score given in all challenges is just under 5.4. My average score given is 7. The group average for this challenge was 5.7 which is some .3+ points higher than normal. Apparently the group felt the quality of submissions in this challenge was above average.

Warning! Personal opinion inserted here.
Something I feel important is to evaluate an image on its own merit. It has to be able to stand on its own long after the challenge topic and rules are forgotten. Therefore, the challenge topic and the ruleset used to craft it are of lesser importance in my personal assessments of images than meeting the challenge or accounting for the ruleset used. I will, however, make accounting for those if it results in a higher score.
End of Warning

Suggestions:
This would make an excellent print. Abandon the ruleset and process this image. Consider fixing both the noise problem and the brightness issue on the bee's "face", then crop it closer offsetting the bee to the lower left side of the frame. That will leave more brightness in the background that will make the bee stand out more.

Unfaithful
by HighNooner

Comment:

Originally posted by TIHadi: I entered this in the LOVE II contest. Is it really that ambiguous?

The short answer to your question: YES

You were going for something far to abstract for a DPC Love challenge. First, unfaithfulness is the antithesis of love and you most certainly were punished by voters for that. Next, the abstract nature of your presentation was to obscure for most voters. You further suffered from the flower backlash from voters who don't like flowers and from the DNMC contingent. In short, this image was doomed before it was entered.

The large out of focus yellow petals are a distraction in the composition that could be easily be corrected by taking a longer timed exposure picture at a narrower aperture for greater depth of field. It would likely require mounting your camera on a tripod if it wasn't already.

This has nice floral possibilities but was the wrong choice for the challenge. :(

Message edited by author 2007-04-25 12:40:51.

My kind of country
by Delta_6

Comment:
Positives:
Image has an almost minimalist feeling to it that well conveys the openess of the country. Technicals generally good.

Technicals:
Good use of the rule of thirds. Ground color is especially good and the sharpness and detail in the trees is excellent. There is faint haloing along the horizon edge and in the trees. The sky color looks a bit artificial blue, probably from oversaturating the blue in post processing. This is evidenced by the fact that the clouds are not pure white, but have a blue color cast. The sky is rather 'flat' appearing. The image MIGHT be tilted slightly counterclockwise to the horizon.

The Challenge:
Meets the challenge, no question. There is not a lot of interest for the viewer to look at in the sky and that likely affected it in voting. Also, since this was an 'expert' editing challenge voters were probably looking for even more pizzaz in the images than they usually expect.

Suggestions:
The sky is the biggest issue. You might want to convert if from RAW again and this time work on the blues in the RAW image processor for whiter clouds and perhaps add more contrast to the sky to bring out stronger detail. A trick you can do to add interest to it is to add a blue gradient layer masked for sky only and adjusted correct just down to the horizon.

If the horizon is not truly level it is really close, but you might want to rotate the image a degree or so clockwise to see how that looks. If nothing else you will be surprised how big a difference in the appearance of the image a slight rotation makes. Might not need it, though.

Dorothy Falls
by WildShutter

Comment:
Wow... deja vu... right next to each other on my list are pictures of Dorothy Falls. I'm guess they were taken by two photograpers there at the same time.

Backyard Waterfalls, Melting Snow
by WriteHeart

Comment:
Wow... deja vu... right next to each other on my list are pictures of Dorothy Falls. I'm guess they were taken by two photograpers there at the same time.

Thomas Edison Crossing the Delaware (Cutting a Swath)
by Les_Feck

Comment:
Your title should say Nikola Tesla. Tesla once worked for Edison but was fired because Tesla believed the future of electricity was in alternating current and Edison did not. After his firing, Tesla invented ALL the technologies for long distance high tension electrical transmission that we use today. Tesla's work is what you see here, not Edison's.

Deep Blue Lake
by scottbh

Comment:
By any chance is this a multi-imaged panorama or just a narrow presentation of the subject.

Ecstasy in Solitude
by Zeus

Comment:
Unsure if the greens are overdone or not, but the tones in the vegetation is very, very nice. You might consider cloning out the building, it is almost a distraction from the rest of the image.

Lonely Old Farmhouse
by weisz

Comment:
Interesting find, nicely composed.