Lunar Landing?
by rll07

Comment:
~~~~Critique Club Comment~~~~

Composition (content)
Nice compostion. The plane passing makes the photo. It adds something interesting, the trail adds depth and most of all height. :)

I think that, as a joke (also given the score), you could rotate it 90 degrees to the right and call it "Rocket to the moon". Somehow it looks even better after a horizontal flip with a rotation of 90 degrees to the left.

Background
The moon is not full. I think it looks better this way.
The background is incredibly noisy. Perhaps a result of enlarging?

Camera Work (Technical)
Can't say much really. For other readers: When you shoot the moon, try to keep the shutter speed fast! The reasons are twofold:
1) The moon moves and it moves fast. Enough to get a blur when you zoomed in on it with a telescope or big zoom lens.
2) The moon is sunlit! That means that it is very bright and returns a lot of light, just as a sunlit wall.

Perhaps another lens? 600mm with a converter? :)

Digital Processing (technical)
Photo is big in filesize, so we are not seeing the results of heavy compression. The noise is what breaks the photo. :(

My opinion
Really interesting, could be stunning when it wasn't so grainy and noisy.

Road Trip
by Swami G

Comment:

Originally posted by psychephylax: A visit from the critique club: Of course you being the driver this might be a rather dangerous situation. I'm pretty sure they sell window clamp tripods that you can put on your window which would be a great thing to use for something like this.

Be sure to use a protective filter on the lens, because an insect can seriously damage your lens!

Along the river
by ed728

Comment:
~~~~Critique Club Comment~~~~

Composition (content)
I have mixed feelings about this composition.
I like the lines of the river banks and tree lines (especialy on the left), it gives a lot of depth to the image. The line of the poles with the net on it gives some depth in the foreground. The reflection of sky colors in the river is also nice.
The frame seems a bit empty however. Shame that there were clouds in front of the hills at the horizon and it would have really added something when there was a boat on the river in a rule of thirds spot in the frame ( or let it fill a large section of the frame to get some really deep perspective).
The line in the middle of the frame is a bit distracting. The odd stuff at the right seems to do that as well.

The balance of lighting (warm sunlight on the left shore) suggests this picture was taken early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Nice colors. The left side of the frame, with a diagonal from the first pole to the first tree on the right bank is the part that I most like.

Subject is no problem for the challenge imho. A river is just like a road, airport, bridge, tunnel etc. All are involved with transport and thus travel.

Background
Nice sky with interesting cloud formations, see above.

Camera Work (Technical)
Good exposure (the shadows contain detail, the bank on the right and in the bend included -viewed on a calibrated monitor-), nice color balance.
I think the best setting for these kind of shots is a small aperture from F5.6-F11 or more on a tripod. But when you can't manipulate the settings that is useless information.
The image looks a bit soft. I don't know if it is the aperture, the sharpening or jpeg compression at work (takes the detail out of the details).

Digital Processing (technical)
A bit of unsharp mask could be used. Compression is very agressive, save it as close to 150kb to save the detail, edge sharpness and color consistency. This one was only 50kb. A higher quality (less compression) could make the treeline look more detailed.

My opinion
The picure is a bit too empty for my taste, but has some interesting elements to build on.

Message edited by author 2003-01-07 14:16:03.

Wild Mustangs
by goodtempo

Comment:
~~~~Critique Club Comment~~~~

Composition (content)
The composition is almost perfect. The angle at wich the bronze horses are shot is excellent, because it makes you feel the horses are running towards you, but make a turn at the last moment. The only things that take some of the power of the shot away are:
* The ear of the front horse is cut off by the uper frame border. And even when it is in, doesn't hur to leave some space between the subject and the border of the frame. I guess it happened by accident. After downloading and full screen viewing I often discover that the frame I considered perfect was slightly moved and cut a detail off.
* The horse with his head down is to close to the edge of the frame. The space at the left side gives some more depth for example and therefore that space is good.

This is a great photo subject. The fountain at the bottom makes this picture alive and kicking. The lighting is great, the artist who made these horses also did a very good job.

Background
Good thing the background is so dark, because it isn't beautiful. The windows reflect and glare and they seem to be in the field of focus, not nice.
There are two things I am thinking about:
* would a polarizing filter take the glare out of the windows and hopefully make them darker, or would it show what is behind them and create even more background noise?
* would a wider aperture (F2.8-F4) blur it more while keepin the horses in the field of focus?

Perhaps the polarizer would also take some of the glare of the water, not that that is a problem, but perhaps an interesting effect, might also do something about the Chromatic Abberation/blooming in the water at the bottomright corner. It would most like take the glare of the edge of the fountain in the bottom of the frame and make it even smoother then it already is.

Camera Work (Technical)
Excellent. Good depth of field (but see comment about background), excellent exposure, good focus, good sharpness. Using the high shutterspeed to freeze the water is a very good choice. As said by others, it really looks like they are running. Using a slower shutter would blur the water to much. Perhaps that was also the choice for F4.5, F2.8 would allow 1/250 at most, too bad that there is no ISO50 on the 707.
Whitebalance looks good to me.

Digital Processing (technical)
Good.

My opinion
Wonderful shot. Just a little bit better framing and a nicer background would really make it a winner.

(my pop.server is unreachable because of dns problems at the moment, so PM won't reach me)

For an instant Smokey the Bear, cook at 450F :o)
by kosmikkreeper

Comment:
ROFL!!!!!!

Ice Shell Mining
by amonteforte

Comment:
Wonderful. Cameratech, composition, colors, subject, focus etc great! 10.

Kicking Up Her Heels
by magnetic9999

Comment:
Sexy. :)
Nice image, only distraction is the blown out rail on the right.
Good frame.

self image
by undieyatch

Comment:
The balance of lighting has to big extremes for my taste.

J O S H
by brandonarbini

Comment:
Pretty good picture, don't think that the bigger black space at the left was really necessary. The lighting & exposure is very good, as well as the depth of focus.
It put a smile on my face when I saw it.

Black & White
by dimitrii

Comment:
Great idea and well done!