Arabian geldings scratching each others backs, this is common partice in horses. Cropped and adjusted levels resized and sharpened in PS C2. Felt the horse's heads fell into the rule of thirds.
Statistics
Place: 91 out of 380 Avg (all users): 6.0414 Avg (commenters): 6.2500 Avg (participants): 6.0488 Avg (non-participants): 6.0345 Views since voting: 3535 Views during voting: 264 Votes: 169 Comments: 15 Favorites: 2 (view)
Congratulations on a very inique capture. My first impressions when seeing the picture was, "wow, that's cool." Wow factor is really important on DPC and you started out on the right foot. Unfortunately for me, the next thing I noticed was the "details" and right away I noticed that the horse nearest us is slightly out of focus (on the mouth). That's a killer of this strong entry because the mouth is of course where the eye is naturally going to go to see what the horses are doing. Drawing the eye to a slightly out of focus area could have hurt your score a little. Along that line, each horses head has a cheek roughly where the third lines would fall in my understanding of the rule of thrids. This means that the mouth really isn't where the third lines fall and again, my eye is taken immediately to the mouth and away from the "rule of thirds." Now here is a comment I'm struggling with. On the one hand I loved the unique take on the rule of thirds by having TWO items in the locations for the third lines (two horse heads). By the same token however, this composition takes away some of the impact of a rule of thirds shot by doing so. In other words, when I see a rule of thirds shot I expect to see one subject, clearly centered in a thirds grid. This shot has two so it doesn't give the isolated effect you might want out of a rule of thirds shot. For me, the background is a slight distraction as well. While natural, I would have liked to see a much shallower depth of field and have those trees be blurred and significantly muted. Again, I spend a moment or two looking at the background trying to figure out what exactly it was and that serves as a distraction. Your voting on the curve is a nice bell shape trending around 6 which is great and you had a ton more 9's and 10's than 1's and 2's so I think the votors agreed with me that the wow factor here was worth some extra points. I think you came close to perfection on this shot. Keep up the great work!
Wonderful image, although I do not think it is a good example of Rule of Thirds. The eyes and backs look like they are on horizontal third lines, but there is nothing of importance on the intersecting "power points". If the crop was wider, the eyes or teeth would be on the power points. Too bad about the timing, this probably would win in the Symmetry challenge.
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