Jeremy Stein

I find the background jarring, and it takes my eyes away from the lovely and well posed model.

Composition is excellent - exposure needs some work. I'd like to see a little more detail in the darker areas.

A wonderfully delicate and soft photo. The way the colors fade toward the top of the picture adds to the overall impression of delicacy and beauty. I also like the way you have left the upper part of the photo empty and white so we strain to see if the petals continue and that holds our gaze in the picture.

Very nice light, nice expression, lovely model, and I like the tree for background. My only complaint is the white stuff on the left side of the tree - maybe crop it so that the tree is the only background?

This is a fine portrait - we are engaged by the subject and caught tight in her gaze. The colors are limited to those needed and the woman's skin is left to be real and have its own texture, the composition is excellent, and the lighting is just right for her. I particularly like the way her arm frames her face for us while leaving some room on the left to balance the darkness around her face. Her expression is guarded but not hostile. My compliments to the photographer and the model!

An interesting pose - dynamic, unusual, and difficult. The lighting is excellent and the composition likewise. Great job!

Very well seen and captured - it almost looks like the frog is holding a green sword!

I love the pose and the expression, but the cat is not well separated from the background. I would also suggest cropping a little from the bottom and more from the top. Just suggestions, but I think they would help make the cat stand out more.

A beautiful child, nicely pictured, but I don't understand why you left all the space on the left side.

Nice capture of a skittish critter. I like the color bands - the brown of the chipmunk, the gray band of the rocks, and the green bands top and bottom - they all combine nicely for a vivid and interesting composition.

Very nice background treatment, well suited to the subject

A bird like this needs a little more room in the frame...

Great idea, very well done. The tonalities are marvelous, and the coffee is perfectly roasted. (Why not try to sell this to Starbucks?)

I really see this as two pictures; the lower third or so, and the upper third or so. The expanse of water in between separates them perfectly. I like the upper one more than the lower one, but together my eye cannot really decide where to look.

Scott,

I think what you are thinking is a seed is actually the inside of the chicks mouth seen between the open tips of the mother's beak. What they feed their young is partly regurgitated syrup, but also tiny bugs. They need the bugs for nourishment and especially for protein, which the syrup does not provide. As far as I know, hummers do not eat seeds at all, but I am no expert.

Lovely, but I think I would have cropped more of the beach. As it is, I think it distracts from the drama of the water and the sky.

Great juxtaposition of the insects, lovely color palette, well-composed - altogether great! (And the slight vignetting helps, too)

The fence on the left takes my eye away from the lovely model. Her pose is interesting and her gaze engaging, but the fence needs to go.

It looks like a cross between a fractal image and an image from the Hubbell telescope. Very eye-catching and wonderful colors! The nice thing about an image like this is that you can dream up all sorts of things within the picture. Very imaginative!

Critiques welcome!

Critiques welcome

Comments welcome!

Critiques and comments welcome!

Comments welcome!

G'day, Peter -

 

First of all, I was very (!) close to this little guy. We were having new floors put into our house, and so I was sort of on house arrest for the week that took. I spent a lot of time hanging out in my computer room, which is on the front of the house. In the front yard, we have a hummingbird feeder, and I soon noticed that this rufous hummingbird regarded the feeder as part of his domain. He did his best to drive away every other hummingbird that tried to use this feeder. He also tried to do the same thing for the three other feeders in the back yard. Anyway, after watching him for a little while, I realized that the holly leaves were his habitual perch after driving off an intruder. That is, after he buzzed someone off, he would perch on this or another nearby leaf for a few seconds.

I took the screen off the window in the room, and also removed the window from its frame ( not hard with these windows) and spent all the time during which the sun illuminated the holly shooting pictures of this little guy - probably a total of 500 or so shots. The 37 mm of extension tube was because he was only about 12 feet way from the camera, and the lens could not be focused that close without the tubes.

The lens was mounted on a Wimberley gimbal head (model 2), on a gitzo 1325 tripod. The IS function was turned off, so it played no part whatsoever in getting the shot. Arresting the movements of the bird was easy, since he would perch essentially motionless for a few seconds after each buzzing. The actual exposure was at 1/100 and f5.6. Processing - capture sharpen, curve layer and hue/saturation layer, then local sharpening. This lens is sharper than you would believe without the 1.4x, and very nearly that sharp with it. Worth the money!