The Available Colors
by JohannesFrank

Comment:
Congrats on the blue. Someone gave me a 10 stop B/W neutral density filter. I had no idea such a thing existed. I've tested using it very similarly to your winning image on daylight ocean photography. Hope I achieve as pleasing a result as you have here.

Sandstone
by LoudDog

Comment:
Congrats on a well deserved ribbon with a superlative image. You were overdo for a win.

You Da' Man!!!

Riding the Wave
by rjkstesch

Comment:
This is a gorgeous image with great perspective and lines. Captures the feel of The Wave exceptionally well.

This is nitpicking but "The Wave" is actually in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument just over into the Arizona side of the border. The expansive Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is next door on the Utah side of the border.

DSC_0237.jpg
by Breeee123

Comment:
K10DGuy is correct... this one is "better" than your entry. Color processing and composition are both superior.

Eagle Nebula, M16
by CyMaN

Comment:
jlanoue... hope voters make a liar out of me and ribbon this one.

"The Itsy Bitsy Spider..."
by bs-photos

Comment:
Nice picture... great dew detail and technical quality. It has great green BG.

However, this isn't an English Cross Spider like this one being eaten by a Preying Mantis:
//www.pbase.com/azleader/image/84903267

You can tell because yours does not have the unmistakable "cross" structure.

and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Luke 11:10
by landcamera

Comment:
Positives:
Captures the feeling of a small country church in a pastoral setting.

Technicals:
General composition is OK, especially placement of the vegetation. The red door acts well as a central focal point for the composition theme.

The image is rotated slightly clockwise from the horizontal. Color is weak in the stained glass window and the greens in the trees and bushes. The church walls are fairly bland.

The Challenge:
Review the other entries in the composition and you will see there are some extraordinarily nice church images that got very ordinary scores. In general, if the composition featured only the building it scored lower than if it had other aditional elements supporting the idea of religion.

Yours scored a little above average in a challenge with nice imagery overall. Perhaps voters thought it a bit ordinary and lacked the illusive "wow" factor we all like to find in an image and then become jaded to those that don't have it for us.

The 4 1's stick out. This is pure speculation but perhaps some voters were turned off by your use of Christian Scripture in your title. There is nothing wrong with that and it supports your message well but DPC is a global group and there are places in the world where Christianity is part of the problem in polarized societies, so you get a couple extra 1s.

Suggestions:
For increased "wow" factor, if you go for such things, you might consider adjusting the greens to make them stand out more, applying a heavy dose of dodge and burn to the church wall to give it more depth and texture. Add very, very strong lighting to illuminate the stained glass window from the inside to brilliantly show it's colors and also support the door's invitation to enter.

Though it seems like a small thing rotate the image slightly counterclockwise for "straightening" the horizon. The horizon in a photograph does not necessarily have to match the true horizon. Unconciously viewers expect to see lines that are close to horizontal and vertical to be made "straight". When "crooked" they act as a viewer distraction.

Cropping off the top of the image to just above the white cross over the door would make the image more compact and draw more attention to the door.

Rather that use Scripture to convey your intent in the title, you might consider opening one of the doors to do the same thing photographically. Adding a model standing outside but looking through the door would add more interest to the composition and also support your theme.

Message edited by author 2007-06-10 11:09:22.

2 Days Old
by shanksware

Comment:
Positives:
Greens contrasted against full earth tones with good background bokeh to emphasize the challenge topic.

Technicals:
Overall a decent quality macro capture. Brown tones across the whole image well emphasizes your intended purpose.

The general composition lacks a directing purpose and a true central interest point for viewers to latch onto and has a very shallow depth of field at f/2.8. It needs something more added to the composition.

Contrast looks weak but overall technical quality is acceptible except for the blurring of some of the plant leaves is not very smooth and act as viewer distractions because they are so close to the sharpest areas of the image. Their edges just don't look right.

The Challenge:
Obviously, you met the challenge. Despite all the discussion about such things virtually every photographer intends to and does meet the challenge. That is not a big issue here.

Though yours is a little more pronounced than most, you will notice that 85% of voters scored your image 4, 5, or 6... only 15% outside that range. It is fairly typical for an image be scored in a narrow range and therefore hard to know exactly what it means. There are HUGE quality differences between images scored 4.0 from ones scored 6.0 yet that is the mixed message sent to you with your vote distribution curve.

The fact there are only 15% of the votes above or below this range probably means there was little in the composition to provoke a user reaction. You were scored below average in a high quality challenge, but with added value this image would have finished much higher.

Suggestions:
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Probably the most important thing to do to "improve" your image is to add something more to the composition.

Your image reminds me of a story DrAchoo told about this sorta similar red ribbon winner he took for the Shapes challenge:


He explained that he picked a pea sprout with an interesting swirl from his garden and taped it to the kid's swing set to photograph. But he felt it was missing something so vainly went in search of his tradmark ladybug to include in the composition. He couldn't find one. Then he remembered where there were some big ants so went and got one, put it on the sprout and quickly photographed it for about 30 seconds while the ant struggled to escape.

Your image needs it's ant or equivalent. The sprouts are not enough. Its a great setting waiting for a main subject. The highest scoring images not only meet the challenge but always have added value to make the composition unique and more interesting.
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Even with your lens wide open you still had to have a 13 second exposure to get the picture. It would be very difficult include any animate object at that shutter speed. Additionally, shallow depth of field(DOF) hurt this image in voting somewhat. You need to shoot at a higher f/number for greater DOF. You could either lengthen the exposure time or get more lighting to make that possible. Of course, shooting at a higher f/number would screw up your great circular background bokeh. Ya just can't win sometimes and have to make compromises.

To see if the contrast is 'really' weak just do a quick "autolevels" adjustment. If it looks better to you after "autolevels" then it is weak and should be adjusted. :)

m
by mattmac

Comment:
Positives:
The selective desaturation was done very competently. The moment captured with the bird good and overall technicals fine.

Technicals:
The trick with selective desaturation is to get the borders natural and keep the color natural with the black and white background. You did well on both counts.

Sharpness and general lighting are all right.

Overall the background is featureless and on the dark and forboding side in strong contrast to the main subject. The entire left side of the image adds little to the overall image and leaves the bird nearly center framed.

The Challenge:
Boy, did you hit the nail on the head. You predict 5.45 and get a 5.47. You might consider buying a lottery ticket. :)

Your score and placing were a little above average. Back when I was allowed to vote I scored this one a "7". In my world that means I agreed with voters and thought it average to. So did you, btw. :)

I was influenced by the featureless background and that the entire left side adds so little to the composition. Otherwise, technically speaking, it is well done and I'd consider giving it an "8" now. I scored that challenge fairly low overall. I'm not a particularly strong fan of selective desaturation to start with.

Suggestions:
Since the background adds so little you might consider a square crop with the bird on the far left of the crop. It would give the viewer more subject to look at, give it an off-centered positioning of your main subject and remove the uninteresting background on the left side.

still standing
by AzCKelly

Comment:
Positives:
General technical quality and tonality are the strength of this composition.

Technicals:
Tonality is particularly nice in this image, especially the browns on the cacti. They are just plain nice. Sharpness is very good except for a little haloing around the right arm and a bit of digitalization visible in some of the "skeleton" fine detail on my sharpness sensitve LCD monitor. The clouds, which sometimes are really hard to find in Arizona, make a nice background.

The Challenge:
In free study challenge voters always have exceptionally high expectations and look mostly for two things. 1-Exceptional technical quality and 2-The elusive "wow" factor. Your technical quality is good but not exceptional and the "wow" factor kinda low. Combined, voters felt yours was a little below average for the challenge.

Suggestions:
kawhona makes some excellent observations and very good suggestions in the comments. I'd go with what he says. His comments remind me of this picture similar to yours that I took down in Tucson using a polarizer: