Cropped, Saturation, USM, Neat Image, Saved for Web.
My brother and I, having tried a completely different idea for the challenge and failed, started goofing around with WD-40, matches, and army men. This is the result.
Nothing political is intended. I make shallow, "pretty" or "pretty cool" art and not the kind that tries to invoke the philosopher in you. I expect I will receive mostly shallow "oh cute" remarks in return.
Statistics
Place: 135 out of 160 Avg (all users): 4.5960 Avg (commenters): 5.5000 Avg (participants): 4.4390 Avg (non-participants): 4.7069 Views since voting: 1093 Views during voting: 285 Votes: 198 Comments: 9 Favorites: 1 (view)
I didn't vote on this challenge so this is the first time I've looked at your image critically. I think your score is result of a combination of two things, your subject choice and a couple of technical issues. One commenter mentioned that toys don't do well in DPC challenges. I'm not experienced enough in the DPC ways to confirm that but a toy soldier as the main subject when fire is the assigned subject is not the way to garner high scores. Compositionally, you did a nice job of setting this shot up. The soldier is located in a good location and all of the pieces fit together well. On a technical level there are things that could be improved. You made the right choice on using fill flash to help bring out the details in the soldier. Unfortunately, the soldier doesn't have a lot of detail to begin with and the fill flash was just a bit strong, causing harsh reflections and strong shadows. If you could have used a couple of light sources from the side, preferably as reflected light, the soldier might have come off looking a bit more 3 dimensional. I hope you find something within this critique helpful and feel free to PM me if you have any questions.
It's a good idea but toys just don't do well at DPC for some reason. I think for this shot to have been more effective the fire should have been in the foreground and the light is not bright/directed to make my eye see what the focus of the shot is. As all I see now is just poorly lit plastic army man who is OOF. You meet the challenge with the fire so 5.
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