petre_petrov1

Completely disagree with Kim: no crops necessary! The stretch of the rocks from the right is precisely what guides your glance into the distance with its strong lines. Great composition!

Critiques welcome.

Very nice colors. Bravo

I completely agree with my critics: the picture is commercial. By the way, Nikiforos, there is such a genre "commercial photography." It is not something OTHER than photography. Itis PART of photography. Elwin, Nikiforos, I don't believe in originality. I don't believe you can live in the 21st century and believe in originality. The "post-modern condition" is just this: the utter impossibility of being or even seeming original. Whether we want it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, we constantly reproduce things we've seen elsewhere, canons, genres, models. This said, I think it's better to signal this condition. Nikiforos, your picture of the window can be found in hundreds of tourist guides to Italy, Greece, Spain, etc. When I was in Italy this summer I took at least 20 such pictures. OK, they are a bit different from yours, but not that much. They also try to "show" that rustic, wood-panelled window set in rough mortar, etc.. Take a look at this: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3095982 This is just one photo I saw yesterday here, on photo.net. It is so similar to yours: the same window, the same shutters, the same "rugged" look... All I am saying is: these are images we have inside of us and reproduce, consciously or subconsciously, through our cameras. Nikiforos, this doesn't make your picture "bad," not at all. It simply means that "originality" is not a viable concept for evaluating 21-st century photography. Look at the pictures on this site. I don't find any of them "original." For example, with all the nature shots (including the beautiful "picture of the month" by Mr. de la Fuente), I feel I've seen it somewhere else: in National Geographic or wherever. Many of them are beautifu, creative, stimulating, whatever you want, but not original.

Great moment with a ton of great color, but what's with all the haze? Is this humidity?

The general color scheme is appealing, but too much detail in the background.

You've caught a great (well, tragic) moment, but the impression is "scattered" between the wreck ant the group of people on the left.

The upper and lower part of the picture seem at odds. The majestic "natural" look below contrasts with the traces of industry above.

Great color, fine composition, but what's going on with the focus?

Last issue of "Popular Photography", pp. 67-69. Brian Peterson's piece "Lemon Fresh Photos." The picture he shows there (on the two-page spread) is similar to this one. Is this where you got the idea? I myself tried to play with it. To tell you the truth, I like your slice of orange better than Peterson's slice of lemon. Still, you could have avoided the out-of-focus area, if you had followed his advice to clamp down the lemon to the side of the glass, so that it is parallel to your lens.

The wall doesn't look too sharp.