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.

Untitled
by Spizzer

Comment:

Originally posted by Spizzer: I never understood why this did so poorly, and the two comments I got were not descriptive enough to even tell if they were for or against it.

Positives:
This is really an inspired idea. Looks like you want to make one of those pictures that doesn't look like anything at all until you find the lion hidden within the noise. Has a high contrast, high key look

Technicals:
Choice of black and white is good. The very high contrast processing and look is done good and is remarkably well balanced across the image. Makes it look like a renaissance artist's sketch. Sharpness is hard to evaluate because of the type of image it is.

You chose to add noise for effect as opposed to grain and that may have affected how voters reacted to the image.

The Challenge:
Image Grain was a tough challenge with a lot of discussion about what and what does not meet the challenge and there were all kinds of suggestions as to how to accomplish that. Looks like you chose to add image noise as opposed to grain to meet the challenge. There is a big difference between film grain and electronic noise and that affected voting. Even though both were allowed, voters expected to see something more like film grain than electronic noise and that is not what they got with this image.

Oddly, you may have been negatively affected by how well you did this image. It looks more like an artwork than a photograph and you may have been faulted for that. Some may have thought it literal and gave it DNMC treatment.

Suggestions:
Find and experiment with a film grain filter to see what you can do with this image to make it look more like a photograph. Probably won't improve the image at all but you might want to see how it changes its look and feel. I didn't enter this challenge but I used both noise and film grain filters for effect in the image I prepared for it.

You might chose to go the other way and add much more noise and make it even more high key to enhance the 'hidden figure' effect. Hard to say if that would have worked either. :)

The lion is somewhat center focused and maybe making it off centered or take it from a diffrent angle would have made it more intersting to viewers.

Crucis
by Federico

Comment:
Positives:
Wonderfully conceived and captured black and white. Subtlely moody and gives the viewer much to think about when looking at it. It is the type of image that draws the viewer back again and again. Technical quality is excellent. The immensity of the cobblestones in the frame stuns the viewer.

Technicals:
Black and white contrast and range is just right. Your processing enhances the moodiness of the composition. Backlighting and shadows enhance the composition greatly.

The depth of field on this one is interesting. One of the few images where major subjects like the two people remaining out of focus fits the composition. Generally speaking you'd normally have the closest foreground in sharpest focus but that is not the case here. It is slightly out of focus. Don't know if that is by design. It certainly doesn't hurt the composition and adds a more curiosity to the picture.

The Challenge:
Certainly meets the challenge well and in a unique and interesting way. Commenters obviously like this image a lot and say so. The average score is low, but that is true of most DPC images. Perhaps voters glossed over this one because it lacks the flash and instant "Wow factor" DPC voters have come to expect.

I voted this challenge and gave this image a 9 and probably should have given it a 10. Its one fine image.

Suggestions:
The reason I know I should have scored this a 10 is because I can't think of anything significant to suggest to improve it.

Gem Lake
by hahn23

Comment:
Well composed but flat contrast treatment of your subject.

Daffodils
by pinbokeshatta

Comment:
Cloud detail is outstanding. Perhaps you should include more daffodills closer up and less upper sky which does not add a lot of interest to the overall composition. :(