You did a nice job of capturing the subject - good facial expression and a natural crop at the arms. The subject stands out nicely against the soft-focussed background.
My main nit are the feathers. The saturated color and high contrast of the feathers against the cap grab attention away from the dancer's face, as if they were the subject of the image, not the dancer. Also, the feathers appear manipulated, which adds to the distraction, for me.
A suggestion may be to lessen the saturation and contrast on the feathers.
This was my favorite image of the challenge. The colors are very striking. I like the composition as well. I was surprised that it didn't place higher. Nice image.
Despite the 50% ratio, I like this image and can't imagine it in a thirds rule world. The colors work wel together and his expression is great. One of the few borders that I didn't really care for, probably because the photo blends right into the white instead of having a clear delineator. Like thin black, white, thin black. Overall a very nice image tho. Bumping to an 8
The sharp differential in saturation between the subject's headgear and the rest of the image makes for a very surreal feel in this capture. I wish this man was in a different setting other than what appears to be a coarse concrete wall. It almost seems a composite of two pictures (the man and the wall) in the sense that you have so much fine detail within the feathers and the figure, but extremely coarse details on the wall which appears to be taken at a different focal length (zoomed in or shot closer to wall). Still a good capture and well presented.
This would be MUCH stronger if the right edge were cropped in to bring the image back to a more conventional width/height ratio. As it is, the image is almost precisely bisected into all subject / all BG.
Something about this LOOKS artificial to me. Did you play around with the feather and background colors? You have some kind of artifact around the head covering that makes it look a little funny... Perhaps from over sharpening? Sorry if I'm assuming too much just sayin' what I see...
TC
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
