gooseberry

Ha-ha, guess what, Alf? -- I had exactly the same thought, but only after I requested critique -- it's definitely doesn't belong there!  Stork's nest instead would be ideal ;)

Cheers for encouraging me, Les!

Here's the reflection in focus take. 
I prefer model's intent/enquiring look in the out-of-focus version over the in-focus smile.

So I've had another go at retouching; it looks pretty good on a downsized picture (but even there there is a discernible edge softness where I put the cloning tool to it :)  The close-up of the result inserted above.

Now, instead of re-posting this image, I've morphed it with the other one, thus creating extended DoF; check it out:

• Audrey twins (think I've managed to make it look as if there were two people standing rather than one with her reflection ;)
• The Magic Mirror (I've retained the actual mirror in this one)

An informal backstage shot.

Wanted to try out the Gorman-Holbert / Carr B&W conversionmethod
(please refer to the 'Technical Details' section in the 'Details'tab if interested in this technique; it's nothing fancy.)

check out the work of Martin @ www.HumanDescent.com

I'd hope they'd share similar insight / wisdom too!  ;)

On the technical side, there are a couple of distracting things I've noticed when viewing large:

• this fuzzy light patch running from running parallel to rabbi's beard and connecting with the glasses -- I'd just paint it over to make the background more uniformly black; and
• the smudge running across rabbi's hat (I'm sure it has a proper name, so please excuse my ignorance in these matters) and his hair along the right edge of the image -- looks like a stroke of a 'blur' brush at too high a setting.

 great composition and exposure to match

The first step is the hardest, so keep working with her on this theme, and to warm and open her up even more, show her "Woman's Sound" by Virgiliu Narcis -- this should do the trick!  ;)

I'd agree with Mark on dancers being excellent nude models, and I also like both the pose and the lighting a lot, however the latter sans the harsh shadows.  I'm sure they are there intentionally, but I'm finding them distracting: the picture becomes too busy and chaotic.

...nothing wrong with that, I reckon, especially if you openly acknowledge the original source of inspiration; that's exactly what I did here (please mind the comment left by the author of the original work -- he was far from offended :) 

The hands-faces are very well done -- I wish I knew how to do things like that -- but personally I don't like the blue background much (but have no ideas to offer as to what might have complemented the main theme better.)

Dynamic pose and good lighting of model's body, but something strange is going on in model's hair: my first thought was that all these specular highlight were droplets of water, but no, it's her hair, and it looks dry.  Whatever it is, it looks distracting to me.

It also reminded me of Rembrandt's style (perhaps because of the combination of dark background and rabbi's "historic" look), but the very first thought that came to my mind when I saw the thumbnail was that of Albus Dumbledore, and he still reminds of this character :)

Wish the horse was foaming at the mouth, but even without it, all 100+ '7s' are well deserved.  With such a fast action, I'd imagine you shoot in a high speed mode and only a fraction of frames turn out to be keepers.  What's your average "hit rate"?

Hi Ioan,

Just wondering: since there's quite a lot of motion in your picture, meaning it'd be impossible to align a series of bracketed images, is this a single image HDR? -- I like it, but it has this distinct heavy-but-not-yet-completely-surreal HDR look, so some will consider the processing to be heavy-handed.

...fotografuj tylko to, co Ci się podoba albo Cię interesuje.
Ale zważ, że Van Gogh potrafił wziąć za temat obrazu stare buciki i stworzyć arcydzieło.

[Jan Sunderland]

...so yeah, Sketch is a very suitable title indeed.

Pretty cool effect: a great shot to begin with (I'd imagine), skillfully processed, and suits the subject extremely well.

If you don't mind me asking, what have you done to it to achieve this look, Mr. Kossak?  ;)

I took this photo(s) as the day was just dawning, but the funnything is I didn't take it for the scene's aesthetic potential butmerely to put to test a handful of techniques I wanted to try out --such as noise reduction (through averaging of multiple images shot atthe same exposure) and extension of dynamic range (through toneblending of bracketed images) as well as a couple of auxiliaryclean-up tricks I had to employ to eliminate (or rather reduce)unsightly fringing artifacts in the foliage against the sky -- withoutintending to publish it anywhere, but, surprisingly, the end resultturned out interesting enough for me to change my mind and post it, sohere it goes!

FYI, if you're curious what techniques I used, please refer to theTechnical Details section in the 'Details' tab.

Finally, for best experience / critique you may want to view itLarge.

It's not a shot portraying the drama of this sport (having said that,

it was a scary problem ;) but rather the aesthetics of its environment

-- it's a pretty cool spot, well worth just hanging around there for

no other reason.

You're on, Robert!

(and I'm *really* glad I could reciprocate, so now it's a case of mutual inspiration, or shall we call it co-inspiration? ;)

-Tomek

P.S.

If you're keen, I've got the first challenge -- this month's project: The Kiss; I'm about to enter...

...on musician's face (looks fine to me for the rest of the image though)

...fooling around in Ms Picture Editor: my baby steps into digital

darkroom, long before I had Photoshop and knew the first thing about

post processing, but I still like it :)

How did she manage to bend like that?!  :O

The texture is so vivid it looks like an HDR-processed image, and there are some halos around the rim of man's hat, a common HDR artifact. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm checking because I really do like the effect and would like to be able to produce it myself, perhaps sans the halo side-effect for portraits ;)

The picture ain't bad -- it has something in it -- but what I don't particularly appreciate is your advertisement where Photographer's Request for Critique should be, so here's my feedback: get rid of...

...as that amounts to spamming!