Jeff Lear

Wonderfully executed concept. Everything from the wardrobe to your set design begs the viewer to become involved.  It's really spectacular.

The only thing I wonder is if the subject might due with slightly less [green-ish] filter than the balance of the scene. More of a curiosity than a criticism.

Thanks so much for taking the time to leave your eloquent thoughts, Arthur.  I love your analogy concerning man's never ending travail with nature and how, despite our attempts to conquer it, we will always be at her mercy.  I believe this is an edit of a previous version that might have been submitted for critique but later removed or hidden in favor of this iteration.

It's a great photograph, lots to look at.  Living in California, it's interesting to see a car on the other side of the world with a license plate from my home state.  I think the addition of the biplane was clever in keeping with the nostalgic theme of your photograph.

As others have mentioned, my overall technical impression is that your image is slightly flat and might benefit from a levels adjustment to increase the tonal range and depth.  I would also remove the color from the biplane.  All-in-all, it's an interesting and engaging photograph.

When I saw the thumbnail I made a wager with myself that it wouldn't translate into something appealing on a larger scale.  I lost that bet.  I really like the way each of the elements reinforces the other despite the obvious entropy.  The stories that hydrant and phone could tell, I'm sure. I also like how the somewhat cheery colors contrast the utter abandonment. The image is nicely captured, I have nothing to offer for improvement.

This is the following morning, so you have an idea of the surroundings and my light setup.

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r34/F1Addict/Jeep/IMG_1969_pn_zpslnrfvtr4.jpg

Thanks so much Mike, Chuck, and Jim for taking the time to offer your thoughts.  Regarding the light over my Jeep, cloning it out is an interesting idea but would fundamentally change the message of the photograph, don't you think?

Your thoughts on how this might be improved are appreciated. Two

exposures on the first night of an epic five day, two-thousand mile

road trip through the southwestern U.S.

I really like this photograph.  The varied contrast between the barn and peaks in the distance is fantastic.  My only gripe is the portion of the tree in the foreground, I find it a bit too dark and incongruous with the rest of the image but that's just my opinion, the photograph is still awesome.

The bottom third of this is quite captivating.  The contrast between the rays and background are well-captured and the golden light is beautiful.  The problem is that most of the image is pixelated, compression-ridden clouds.  Now I understand they provide some yin to the yang but maybe a little too much.  I think the image would be stronger with the top two-thirds cropped out and a higher quality jpeg conversion to reduce the compression artifacts.  If you're concerned about theft (the large, conspicuous watermark suggests you are) I would recommend reducing the dimensions of your upload.

Great shot, Lenny.  It really captures the spirit of Burning Man.  I especially like that you maintained some environmental context.  My only critique is that (and maybe it's just my monitor) the lighting on your subject seems a little flat.  It has a bit of a post-apocalyptic/Mad Max feel to it, even though I know it's just a big party in the desert.  Nicely captured.

Great shot of an often photographed building.  You've captured it well and provided some context with the mountains.  Every time I drive by this old place there is someone stopped along the side of the highway with their camera pointed at the building, I doubt many of those photographs are as good as this.  If you ever get the chance to do this again, I would recommend early morning as the building faces east and catches the dawn light brilliantly.

Regarding the contrails: With a concentration of three major airports located just 300 km (180 miles) due west of this location, contrails are inevitable from westward air traffic.  This was shot from a location about 2 miles east of the shack in Bart's photo.  There are literally more contrails than blue sky, editing them out would require replacing the sky with something else.

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r34/F1Addict/Contrails_s.jpg

This has been steadily moving through my little block of Followed Photographers images and I didn't want to let it slip away without letting you know my thoughts.  I follow some pretty amazing photographers but, at the moment, nothing they've done can compare to this.  The romance of old-school dodging and burning, the suggestive title, the allure and mystery of what lies beyond, it does everything a photograph should and it does it beautifully.  I can find nothing negative to say about this, but I tried.

Your horizon is a little crooked and, unfortunately, they don't make any sort of software to correct this so I think you should go back to this spot and try taking it again ;)

I agree with Mike and Alf regarding the elegant simplicity, the way two land masses embrace from this angle, the limited color pallet, it all works together to engage the viewer.  It's beautiful.  If I were to offer constructive criticism it would be regarding the horizon.  Because so little of the actual horizon is visible, I would have tilted this a bit (clockwise) to level out the boat and closest peninsula which seem to funnel my view into the bottom left corner and away from the splendid view.

Reminiscent of the great Jerry Uelsmann.  Photographically wonderful with nicely rendered textures and tones but it's the layers of storytelling that intrigue and captivate me.  Well done.

It's a pleasant casual portrait that I think would have worked better as a head-and-shoulders portrait due to the shadows.  The light on her face and exposure is very good but the entire image must be considered and there are a lot of distractions beyond the shadows.  I would recommend a slightly different pose or shooting angle to emphasize the fact that she has two legs.  Also, her right hand that appears to be growing out of her lower back.

There's tons of potential and I look forward to seeing more.

What a fantastic portrait.  Your frame could not contain that hair.  I, too, love the sly smile and agree with Mike regarding her resemblance to a young Andie MacDowell.  You could easily convince me that this required and received no processing which is a credit to your abilities.  Any grievances I have aren't worth mentioning.

It's a beautiful idea and excellent composition but am I the only one who thinks it's out of focus?

I drew a conclusion from the thumbnail and I shouldn't have.  I thought I wasn't going to like this.  On the contrary.  Despite it's simplicity, I really like it.  The color of the houses against the somewhat bland landscape is very appealing and imagination stirring.  I agree with Larry that the right side seems a little truncated but I start thinking about how pleasant it would be to live so simply and forget all about the right side.  I don't think it would be as compelling without the wonderful lighting and excellent exposure.  Well done!

Does it work?  Yes, to a degree.  It's not a masterpiece but it's an interesting interpretation of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore.  They used to sell filters to achieve this effect, no filter necessary with 90% humidity.  My only criticism would be that the entire image leans to the right.

Some of it is certainly luck but chance favors the prepared. A couple years ago I discovered that there was a high altitude east/west air corridor just to the south of where I live. From my perspective, this corridor appears about 40º above the horizon which means that any time the Moon rises to that altitude, there is small chance that, at some point, a plane will fly in front of it. In theory, but in reality the phenomenon is rare. The planes (around one every ten minutes) usually miss the Moon, some by a little and some by a lot so capturing an image like this requires patience and, occasionally, several nights of observation.

The statistics support how unlikely it would be to witness such an event. According to Harvard, in collaboration with SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), there are approximately 40,000 square degrees in the celestial hemisphere (the visible sky above and around you). The full moon occupies 0.5 degrees² of that hemisphere or about 1/80,000th. So, the chances of seeing a plane fly through that tiny 0.5º area is one in 80,000 divided by the number of planes in the sky during the period of observation. Remember when I wrote about the luck part?

This photo was recently selected to grace the pages of the Mono Lake Committe (facebook) calendar.  It represents both the month of February and my first ever published photo.

Thank you Michael and Janice.  Here is a composite of the full sequence. I wasn't sure which to use as they each have their merits but finally settled on the one displayed above because of the visible jetwash that distorts the western limb of the Moon more dramatically than the others.

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r34/F1Addict/Moon/Sequence_PN_zps41066674.jpg

Learning to do this is an exercise in patience and perseverance but includes a certain amount of luck.  I would normally have shot this at ISO 100 but the higher ISO (200, in this case) allowed me to increase my shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/500.  The faster shutter speed prevented motion blur of the fast-moving jet.  The five photos represent a total of about one second.

Beautiful shot, Ya.  I love the cool blue tones against the warm setting sun.  Nicely captured and processed.  The purple sky is a little over-wrought for my taste but others, I'm sure, will find it appealing.

One correction, this is actually Tioga Lake.  Ellery is a couple miles down the road.

I've got a bit of an obsession with photographing things flying in

front of other things. Maybe because it's a little more challenging

than photographing things that aren't. As always, I look forward to

reading your opinions, thoughts, and critiques. Good or bad, I

appreciate them all. You can click to see actual size. That was a

joke, the Moon is very big and would never fit on your screen.