aqualarue

She was obviously not a fan of yours.  It looks as if you are actually outside the shop? The only thing that spoils this, and I presume it was a film not digital shot judging by some grain, is the over sharpness in this digital version.

Incredibly atmospheric, one can obviously be forgiven for seeing a painting.  Excellent work.  The fact that it is a horse and cart adds tremendous nostalgia to this piece.

.....then you took the shot a wee bit too early.......

Though nothing like the fist ever photograph taken back in Le Gras by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1827, an 8 hour exposure, this image strangely triggered the memory of that first image.  Otherwise a quite a nice view, cosy.

I think that what you have done with the image is 10 out of 10, I really like the way you have infused vision and creative license into this image.  Well done.  Now, I do feel that there is something bugging me and I did not know what for a few minutes....I think, and I hope you don't mind, I believe it is two things: 1. The tip of the grass that covers the side of the church.  Now you may have done this on purpose, but I feel just a little more of the church wall would have contributed greatly to enhancing the appeal of this image.  Also 2. actually no two.  It's just that grass.  Otherwise a really excellent work.

I like Infra red photography when it is done well.  This and your others are really appealing.  I can't really critique this since I am not knowledgeable about he in and outs of infra red.  However I would like to say that I like all your images in this series Except one: Entitled - Country Road.  I feel the sky is awful, if you can take that...it is spoiled I feel by that sky.  The rest though are well, just really nice.  I would like to ask though, is all this digital infra red or film.  I would not know he difference, I am guessing digital because I do not see grain in the highlights which I think, if I remember, is a feature of infra red regardless of ISO speed.  But please correct me if I am mistaken.  Nevertheless an excellent and attractive portfolio of infra red work.  As for this particular image, I would hang a really big one up on my wall, and I do not even do that for some of my own work!  It is for me at least one of the top 3 images in your work.

This is also an 8 minus 1, giving it a 7.  Reason being I feel that the beauty and power is somewhat taken away by the image having been taken a wee bit too low down, ie, too much fence/path.  Perhaps a little bit up would have made me give you an 8.  Kind regards, Chris.

This is an 8.

Ok it's a nice portrait, but concerned about the background - does not fit.

Hi, well I'm impressed, and this probably could be the beginning of another 30 posts....Had I have seen these two in the beginning I would have without a doubt chosen this second version. The gate now contributes to the whole image and is no mean interference, the light is accentuated and the whole image is for me perfect, the top right where light and dark fight for control is a masterpiece of mood and aesthetics. The light reflecting off the cobbled stones catches your eye more than the previous version and I find that while I enjoy the whole image and investigate every little corner more than I did the last one I am brought back to the the focal point - the light of the lamp behind the branches.

Hi Daniel, that subtle Purple colour in the rock works nicely.  I presume it is a rock.  I enlarged the image just to be sure, but I think the foreground grass is way too over sharpened.  Maybe it is your downsizing for the web?  If it is then I am sure you have the answer.  Another very effective way to sharpen, if you have photoshop, is the high pass filter as a layer on top of the image, then set blend mode to soft light or overlay.  This method of sharpening is often preferred over the USM filter.  Just an extra - not to offend you.

Hi Daniel, it is effective and yes it is an eye-catcher.  But at the expense of appearing in-polite, I would have left a hint, just a subtle hint of the original colour in the wood; did you try that?  I just feel that the contrast between the colour and the B/W is a little too much?

Hi Daniel, funny, the one thing that attracted my attention was not the bag, or the grain in the wood, but the orange speckled throughout this image.  Though I  am eager to know why it is called dedication.  The bag means something, and permit me to take an enormously wild guess - would it have anything to do with collecting the firstfruits of a harvest?

As a by thought, interrupting I suppose, I don't like image sanitisation, imperfections that are often seen after a minute or so are sometimes welcome, they lend authenticity to an image. I often am reminded of so many images from the 50's and 70's that are respected, yet upon analysis would never live up to our 21'st century analysis or aesthetic appeal. In fact they would not even be picked by the elves...and yet they sold. I am actually trying so hard to see what it is that Fred does not like, nicely of course.

No Martin, I absolutely disagree, it even sounds like you are having a Joke, a kind of game - like "How will they react if I say this" - well I'll be your first sucker. What you have above just said is the whole point of the image. Without the interaction of the tree and post this would be just another fog image of a path between boring trees. This image has stepped out of the mundane and is far more engaging aesthetically than the image that you have just described. The attraction is on the illuminating leaves and the lamp post and the sharp delineation upper right between the light and dark, this crisp sharp cut-off enhances the mood and alters the atmosphere from foggy image with morning feelings to middle of the night where a bit of fear is subdued by the cosiness of the bright rays, whereas in a foggy image the eyes wander all over the place, the mood is predictable and the attention span short. We have all seen those laborious Mist images - I've even made them and deleted them rather promptly. PS: (I'm not shouting at you, just imagine me interrupting you in a class room and then buying you coffee afterwards).

I feel the whole image has everything in place for mood and atmosphere. The strength of this image lies in the rays of light illuminating perfectly everything around it. I see absolutely nothing that needs altering or improving except for one minor but actually overwhelming interference, and that is the tiny white illumination on that gate, personally I would have blacked it out. The main thing that attracts me is the illumination of the leaves and the wonderful way in which you have conceived the photo by keeping the light of the lamp behind the branch, that makes this image possible of course. For me there are no imperfections here. The sheer purpose of the image is to delight, and it does that very well.

Something I generally never do, but I have to be honest and say that this

image is Manually Focus Stacked, hard work I must say, was it worth it?

The water has superb detail and texture but I find that the rest is spoiled.  something not right about the trees and leaves.  I know that HDR is a tricky business and I am no fan of it to be honest, however I have to say that I find everything except the water to be somewhat unreal.

Mmm, Hi there Steven.  Well firstly I appreciate the chemistry since that is one of my small specialities, however I doubt that others will share your enthusiasm for what you have said, albeit perfectly correct.  People will look at this sort of photo and see aesthetics, not science.  They will see the colours and not the physics of light.  Humans are pre-determined by nature and genetics to appreciate and absorb beauty, aesthetics, colour mood light form and creatively digest the world around them - not the scientific principles that govern these forces.  But I am sure you are aware of this which is why you want them to see what you see.   Adding any description to an image pre-determines the viewers interpretation to line up with/agree with yours, nothing wrong with that in some images, but it then loses some of its power, an image that captivates and raises questions and interrogation without any words is the most powerful of images.  It is impossible, unless you are a war photographer or a street documentary photographer, it is impossible to to achieve a consistently large consensus of interpretation amongst viewers of an image that will agree with what you see.  Your attempt to do what you have described may be possible, but it would require a photographic series, not a single image, and quite some creative vision.  A good beginning image in the story might well be something that is very clearly scientific, this should be your opening image, the image that sets, in a subtle way, the interpretation of the rest of the documented story.  For example, I have a documentary series that is all about post traumatic stress related to childhood.  All 7 or 8 of the images can be interpreted as well absolutely anything, and the viewer would leave confused and depressed.  But my opening image leaves no room for how I want the viewer to engage with the rest of the story.  I am not forcing my views, rather guiding the viewer into a direction that I want him/her to take.  So an image of electrons, or spheres around a saucer, or some physics might be a good start.  (I know, silly suggestions, but you get where I am going hopefully). Also having looked briefly at your portfolio, there is potential but too many people, I think some aspect of the physical world would be helpful in order to emphasize what you are trying to do, more static objects that you could manipulate creatively, the elements such as wind and fire, - take lots of photos and print them out about 3 inches by 3 inches; then lay them all down on a table, and make a coffee, and see what fits together; see it as a jigsaw puzzle that needs to 'precipitate' a coherent message. Best of Luck, and try to produce imagery that does not require too much explanation - a captivating title would be so much  better, and then the viewer would not feel bullied into a thinking process that is alien to them, not for us, but for them.

Hi, nice composition.  Now turn it upside down and hang it on your wall.  I did that with one of mine, it actually works quite nicely and confuses people for just a moment.  Especially because you have captured a ripple on the right, did you throw in a small stone just as you shot this.  I don't go much for reflections at all, so over done these days, but yours is one of those with pleasant potential, and I like it a lot.

A great litle image.  Very nice.  Though, contrary to what someone else said,   I feel that the light to the left is a must.  It brings balance and further accentuates the pastel Tonals.  Without it the colours would darken slightly and the flower would be demanding Tooooo much attention and this would make for a less interesting subject and tedious on the eye.  Maintaining the focal point while being able to passively force the viewer's eyes away from that focal point in order to "search" and like a magnet be brought back to the focal point without much effort is a Highly brilliant image.

Hi Arthur, I can only speak for Photoshop CS3, so hopefully you will be able to translate into elements.  Oh and yes, love the darkroom myself, am doing great cyanotypes now and getting into toning them.  Ok luminosity and density mask:  Very simple:  Go to the channels palette in your image that is on the screen.  place cursor over the top image (if RGB do not place over the red/green or blue channels), now simply hold down the option key on a mac, on windows I imagine that it might be the alt key, while holding click with the mouse.  You should get a dotted lot of squiggly lines.  Now hopefully in elements this next step exists, at the bottom of the channels palette there are a line of symbols, one of them might/should be a circle inside a square.  Click on this and the selection should be saved as an alpha channel in the channels menu only.  You will not see this in the image layers section.  It is good to save this selection because you can refine the selection with curves and levels inside the channels palette.  (by the way, if the selection still has the dotted squiggly things up just press de-select,alt + D)  you will not lose the selection because it is saved as an alpha channel.  Now to make this a mask in the layers palette all you need to do is to click on the alpha channel to select it, click 'load' via a symbol at the bottom of the channels palette and you will get those squiggly dotted lines again, go now to the layers menu and click on the image in the layers palette, (hopefully you have duplicated the image so that there are now two images one on top of each other in the layers palette, simply now press load mask as you would normally do if you were just creating a normal mask.  Ok, this is very long winded because I have tried to explain every detail.  If you run into difficulty it would actually be a nice idea for us to skype each other, if you have skype.  Or I could phone and talk you through via the computer, it's cheap and I don't mind.  By the way this whole process creates a density mask, to make the luminosity mask just INVERT once the density mask is created.  Using both together gets even more fun!

No words are needed for this one, this is a brilliantly captured moment in a fantastic way.  Absolutely wonderful. You could actually have a great 30 minute conversation about this image in a roomful of documentary students.

Hi arthur, I would have created a quick luminosity mask, as an alpha channel, use this then as a mask on the image and then via either colour burn, multiply, or a curve movement in the shadows I would have begun to darken a little everything else.  A luminosity mask is great, much much better than using anything else to do this sort of thing because it reduces/brightens shadows/lights in a balanced tonal gradated manner. 

Are you still climbing trees at your age?  Or was it a ladder?  Well I'll tell you a secret, I am.  My wife laughs because I often forget how to come down!  I like this. There is a definite consistency between the light on the sitting part of the bench, and the leaves.  I would have probably have tried to accentuate that a bit more in the after processing.  But forget it, I'm just waffling, it's easy to comment when you I did not take the image.  It's really clever Arthur, nicely spotted.