Hello, and greetings from the Critique Club. This is your critiquer Artyste speaking.. bow down before me and worship my comment... err... heh, sorry. I sometimes get a little into this.. shall we start?
Initial Thoughts
Dark overall, not too interesting.. not enough of the challenge subject.
Composition / Content
While it's a unique composition in a way, you don't really give the viewer any one thing to focus on, and the image tends to just be there.. nothing really going on, nothing really being said. You also don't have enough of a connection to the branches to really sell the image for the challenge.
Background
Some hot spots in the clouds and the sky just seems a little oversaturated and dark.
Camera Work / Technical
You've done ok with your metering and and focus, but it looks as though post-processing has interfered a little.
Digital Processing
This is where a lot of the issues in this image come from. You seem to have leveled the clouds a little more harshly than they needed to be, yet kept the rest of the scene really dark and forbidding. The eye is gravitated to the clouds because of this, and you almost miss that there are branches in the image altoghter. By the time you realize, "oh yah, there they are", it's unappealing and the voter has probably given a lower score and moved on. For myself, this image is just a little oversaturated, there aren't enough highlights and detail in the brush, and the clouds are too blown out at the edges and have a cyan tinge to them. A few more selective color tweaks, a little less of a heavy hand on the Unsharp Mask, and less saturation would have helped here. However, even with all of that, we're still left with a generally uninteresting photo.
Fits the Challenge
You do include branches, but the connection to the challenge is tenuous at best, with the clouds becoming far more of a subject than the branches themselves.
My Opinion of the Photo
Not a fantastic photo to begin with, but a heavy hand on the processing has brought it down a little more as well. Watch that your processing enhances your photos, but doesn't define them.. also, keep in mind that photos with a more central subject with more interest to them do much better on DPC. You want your photo to speak for itself, and speak loudly. This photo is more "leaves and clouds" than "Branch", and that hurt your scoring. Keep practicing and trying new things, and good luck in future challenges.
You've got great color, focus, and contrast, but the elements seem to be so separate that there's nothing that connects them except the title. Technically a good shot, but compositionally, I think it's missing a focal point and/or link to bring the pieces together.
This is a very dramatic shot bu,t being underexposed, the tree is in "almost" sillouette. If you could have used a gradiated ND filter to expose the tree properly (reducing the brightness of the cloud/sky) this would really be a great shot.
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