Heat

Comments and ratings welcome. Thank you for stopping by.

Well done pattern shot. The left and right balance nicely and the colour works very well. I'd call this one a winner.

Great, Nickolay!

Not only do I love the colors, but I love the way the road carries your eye straight through the picture. Great shot!

When I looked at thumbnail, I noted like "what an interesting shot!" Frankly, I like the composition. Colors and patterns work well too. I guess one of your best digital alterations.

I don't usually comment on shots like these, but this one caught my eye...good stuph.

VERY NICE AND QUITE INTERESTING TOO....THE WAY IT IS COMPOSED....IT LEADS YOU RIGHT INTO THE PICTURE.....ACROSS THE BRIDGE....

Good!

Very good!!!! Congratulations!!!

While to composition is interesting and leads well, it doesn't seem to lead to something too interesting. I also find it way over saturated. Sorry.

Sharp, incredible colours and the composition is wonderful, a great image.

I am a "purity" at heart, but this is absolutely stunnig digital alteration...Well done!

When there were 39 ratings I noticed the only 3/3, that means almost 3 points down from average for aestetics. Without ANY explanation. If the image is so bad, say WHY, personally I'd be interested to know. It's from Ilan, one of members who supposed to introduce 'balance'on PN...I'm wondering if it's a 'constructive' rating, critique or any other kind of balance?...Sorry, Nickolay, for using your page, if you mind, I'll delete my post.

While the colors and leading lines have a tendency to suck one into this image... they did me initially at least... the details in the manipulation have me driving down the road and getting a flat.

 

The severity of the light fall off in the sky to the left conflicts terribly with the brightness of the road, but the real killer for me is the shadow that runs the whole right side of the image. The shadow doesn't make any attempt to correlate with the position of the sun.

I am glad that most of you liked my after-work experiments. Obviously, they are not as rigorous as those that I do before I get home. For instance, the shadow in this image...

 

Thomas, I do appreciate your comment about the shadow. This shadow on the right is something that I overlooked or, more frankly, even have not thought about.

 

Vlad, I do not mind any kind of discussions and comments next to my photos as long as they are polite ;-)) In fact, I had some thoughts similar to what you mentioned. My conclusion: PN is a good recreational site with a lot of educational potential. The overall idea, design and functionality of PN are excellent (7/7). It is definitely original. It is also useful as a resource in social psychology ;-))

 

Good composition and nice colors, well done

Nice work, Nickolay.

Very nice. I have never produced anything nearly so good with my A40.

 

It feels to me like it needs to be stretched horizontally a bit. You might also get the road of the dead center. Do you think so?

I like the perspective...M.Hayward's crop is cool too. Just gives it a different feel. Good work.

It was interesting for me to see M. Hayward's version since my own alteration included a little stretch vertically. While the highway had an appreciable elevation, it is hyperbolized in my image (see for comparison the original image above and "a side view" below).

 

I think "flattened" version also makes sense. I also agree that the road in my compostion is dangerously close to the dead center.

 

The highway did have an appreciable degree of elevation at some point.

Looking today (july 10th, 2003) at the 53 ratings this picture got, I see I win the lowest rating prize with my 3/3 (the average of the 53 being A:5.77/O:6.00).

 

Why did I rate the way I did? (note that nobody asked me that question and Nickolay never questioned this rating, I'm adding this comment from my own initiative only).

 

Originality: the composition of this picture doesn't speak to me much. The road was going up and a picture was taken. Look at the original colors picture posted by Nickolay above, I don't find it very interesting nor especially well composed. We have some details on the right side (poles, birds, sign) but they don't really interact with the rest in my opinion (note the birds that end up by the added sun do have a role in the final work that they didn't in the original picture).

 

Then we have the color treatment. Personal taste again, but the colors slapped on this picture appear to me as trying to shout as loud as possible and remind a certain science fiction kind of feel sometimes found in cartoons (I'm not very clear here, I know). To summarize, in the composition choice and the color choice I don't find much creativity or imagination (imagination is not for me just throwing together things without any order or plan behind it).

 

Now on the aesthetic side - I guess aesthetic is much more personal than originality - I find this shot quite unpleasing to look at. Not because of the composition - which although I don't find very interesting doesn't hurt my eye - but because of the colors mentioned above.

 

There's also something that might not help my perception of this work (photo is actually not the right word to qualify it I guess), is the somewhat realistic rendition of the road and the totally "out there" background. Again, it could have worked (and it appears to work for most other raters here) but for me it doesn't.

 

So I stand behind my 3/3. ;-)

I always appreciate comments with so much detail. But, as a matter of fact, I have not paid much attention to Ilan's lonely 3/3 rating. I noticed Ilan's rating only after reading Vlad's comment that specifically pointed it out.

After that I even went through Ilan's portfolio - naturally, with anticipation of some outstanding works. While I did find two photos that I liked and even rated 6/6 one of them, I was disappointed with many others. For instance, it's hard for me to believe that a photographer with a good eye and taste would produce (not to mention upload on PN) a photo with completely washed out sky. Nonetheless, even this type of photos can get an average rating of 5.5/5 if 2-3 viewers like them. I could probably add my 3/3 to lower that average but, of course, that would be considered "revenge rating" ;-))

 

Hope none of us takes this too seriously.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I haven't seen Vlad's comment until you pointed it out in your comment just above mine here.

For me 3/3 is not horrible, it's just below average. 4/4 is average, i.e. not good but not bad. If I really feel something has no merit at all, I use 1 and 2.

I never try to balance ratings by giving a lower rating than I think the picture is worth (in order to bring the average to a rating I think it deserves). I balance only by giving my honest opinion and rating on a picture and rating it without being influenced by the other ratings given (I try at least, it's not always easy).

What does happen is that if I see a picture I would rate low but the picture has almost no ratings, I don't feel any urge to give a bad rating. When I see a picture I would rate low and it has some number of mostly very high ratings, then I do give a rating. This might indeed give the impression that I'm rating low in order to bring the average to where I think it should be, but I promise you this is not the case.

And for washed out skies... Not all skies have clouds. ;-) See my comment on the page. (I would be very pretentious anyway to say I only make good photos. You should have rated it 3/3 or whatever you thought it was worth. Although I originally thought it had some merit, I can clearly see how I would rate 3/3 something like this).

Ilan, I didn't mean that if you rate low, here is something wrong, tastes are different. I just wanted to suggest, that if you give a rating BELOW AVERAGE, it means that image has some serious problems. It would be better, at least briefly, point out what kind of problems, like Thomas did. Or as you did much later. Otherwise, why we all are here, to enjoy ratings? Any, even subjective opinion may be useful not only for a photographer which image you are critiquing, but for many others too. I'm not sure if many of them will revisit images.

 

As for "balancing", I may be wrong. It was inspired by recent discussions. I just noticed, that your ratings (usually with no comments) used to be lower than image averages and they are similar to ratings coming from a certain group of people supporting the 'balancing idea'. Personally, I don't mind against balance, if it's in agreement with basic PN principle to LEARN. On my opinion, high rating without comment just says that viewer satisfied with photo or just don't see problems, so here nothing to learn. Low rating says about problems and should be commented, especially by experienced photographer. It's the way to learn.