The Strike
by BakerBug

Comment by Majanka:
Wow cool!
Hope to catch some lightning some times...

Fun for a Girl or a Boy!
by BakerBug

Comment by Majanka:
Oooow this was one of my favorite toys when I was a little girl. Brings back memories. Like the colors in this pic.

Fun for a Girl or a Boy!
by BakerBug

Comment by Judi:
Hehehe...fun image with such bright colours. It could use a bit more contrast to make it pop.

The Strike
by BakerBug

Comment by Judi:
Wow...wicked. If you have the time...next time try for an area without the power lines.

The Strike
by BakerBug

Comment by PHOTOKID:
The overall shot is great, Lightning is a very had subject to capture. The only thing that urks me is the power lines. the horizontial nature of power lines takes away the strength of the diagonals created by the lightning. Another thing I would try is a small crop to make the lightining come in from the upper right corner. this my give a better feeling of depth as well. Good Shot.

Rich

Feet!
by BakerBug

Comment by atupdate:
Hello from the Critique Club,

I remember thinking when I voted on this image that it would fit better in the Action Shot II category then it did Transportation. The reasoning behind my thinking was that the boat pulling the skier had more to do with the mode of transportation than the fact that the skier wasn't using skies. With that in mind, I still liked the shot and considered the image as meeting the challenge, but just not strongly. I would guess from the number of 1, 2, and 3 scores you received that not all of the voters were as liberal in interpreting the challenge as I.

As for the image itself, there are a couple of technical shortcomings that may have had a negative affect on your score as well. First, the skier is placed a little too close to the center of the image. If the image had more of the towrope showing and less of the water behind the skier, the rope would have been a much stronger leading line to the main subject, the skier. Second, the image is a bit flat and could use more contrast and saturation to give it more depth and pop. With the red tonality of the skin, you might need to do some selective saturation to boost the pop factor. I would start with boosting the blue saturation then try green and maybe magenta.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions regarding this critique.

Tim

Edit: Typo

Message edited by author 2006-08-16 14:06:42.

Sunset Skier
by BakerBug

Comment by TooCool:
From the Critique Club:

First off I gotta say how much I like this shot. Looks like it was a lot of fun to shoot it.

What I like: From a compositional point of view, this shot is flawless. It can't be easy to frame like this while on a boat moving fast enough to pull someone across the water. Love how you had the chance to shoot this so that you had the sun reflection almost perfectly behind the skier. The background adds to the shot nicely adding parallel lines to the wake. I REALLY like how you have the tow rope lit by the sun. It really seperates it from the water.

What I don't like: I ain't got a boat to shoot shots like this from... Just kidding! This is more of what DPC voters don't like than my personal preference. The shot is quite soft. You can see it in the tow rope. The water isn't truly frozen either. This may be just because you're on a fast moving boat shooting at a fast moving subject and you're propably hand held, not that a tripod would help... Your shutter speed just wasn't fast enough to stop the action. The shot also has the appearance of being oversharpened. This is most likely just a side effect of the backlighting. When you resize to DPC challenge sizes, subtle backlighing can end up appearing like sharpening artifacts. This probably looks fine in print, but it's another thing to think about when picking the kind of shots that you want to enter in challenges if you care about your score.

All in all a very nice shot. Most people who see this would be amazed. Unfortunately DPC voters are photographers...

Yours
TC

Feet!
by BakerBug

Comment by edslone:
Amazing foot action.

Feet!
by BakerBug

Comment by Dazmat:
Looks like he's about to laugh from "tickly-feet-syndrome"

Feet!
by BakerBug

Comment by Agaricus:
Dang!