In the Shadows
by karmat

Comment:
A good dignified portrait. Certainly better that you can't see his cardboard sign.

The lighting on his face is really harsh with the shadows - not sure if you wanted that or not. Maybe taking it from a direction with either sunlight full in his face or full not in his face would have let you expose more for him ?

Another thought in general - pay attention to the background - even though it can be hard to do. He has a traffic light poking out of his head.

I realise this is a very difficult and emotive subject choice and is difficult to think of all this sort of stuff while dealing with just taking the picture. A very good entry.

City Traffic
by nds

Comment:
A worthy winner - the converging lines lead you straight to the 'what the!' moment at the top

Bright Idea!
by crabappl3

Comment:
A hard exposure to get right but you've made a good attempt. The very black and very white subjects are at the extremes of what you could get away with and the silver on the bulb seems to have suffered a bit as a result.
It is well composed, and the glow/ halo around the bulb works quite well. I think I might have preferred it with a shorter exposure, almost to the point of just seeing a glowing filament, perhaps ?

Bright Idea
by ganders

Comment:
Lovely detail - you've got the exposure just right in this, even to the point of showing some of the filament wire. The focus doesn't seem to be quite right, though that could be the reflections on the bulb - makes it look slightly blurred unfortunately. Hard to control those reflections in this case. Good effort though.

What's the point?
by goodtempo

Comment:
great negative spaces! Very graphic, like it a lot - why did you pick grey for the background colour ?

90 degrees latitude
by zadore

Comment:
good background choice, great selective depth of field, well composed in the frame

PALATABLE COLOURS
by Ptman

Comment:
The new Critique Club: Test Critiques #1

Initial impression : A wonderful riot of colours that 'sets the scene' of a painting palette very well.

Technically the diagonal placement of the brushes gives some movement to the picture, though
the slightly soft/ out of focus brush in the lower left is a bit annoying. The brown brush ends up
as the center of interest and my eyes keep coming back there and working through the implied
triangle between that and the other brush. Again the softness gets in the way.

I think I might have preferred this with some paint on the brushes as it feels too setup - there is a
difference between a setup shot that looks setup and a setup shot that doesn't!

You might have been able to tweak the contrast/ saturation of this shot a bit and made the colours
even more vibrant but they are strong as they are and that could be the vagaries of monitors
making an impact.

Overall a very strong entry and a good close-up. Certainly trying to keep more elements in the plane
parallel to the lens might have kept more of the shot in sharper focus, as there doesn't seem to be
much motivation for more selective DoF control in this particular instance.

Gordon - feel free to disagree or contact me to continue a discussion

Dandelion Puff @ Sunrise
by sulamk

Comment:
think this might have stood out better against the sky, to show the fine features more clearly ?

Floppy Abstract
by DCThiessen

Comment:
Wow! love it. Design/ abstract/ colours. Excellent

Astronomically Small
by indigo997

Comment:
nicely abstract glass. Lots of swirling and circles. Not sure if the diagonals are best placed/ composed to make it for me.