I'm disappointed in the score this received. I thought this was a really strong entry. It seems too many people thought it didn't fill the frame. Since I love the whiskers, I felt that having the whiskers touch the edge of the frame would definitely meet the challenge, but live and learn. Anyway, I still have a photo that pleases me.
Here is the original so you can see that these whiskers are natural and were not produced by over-sharpening the image.
Statistics
Place: 139 out of 285 Avg (all users): 5.4747 Avg (commenters): 5.3750 Avg (participants): 5.1687 Avg (non-participants): 5.8133 Views since voting: 873 Views during voting: 238 Votes: 158 Comments: 12 Favorites: 0
Wow, I think you got a little robbed scorewise on this one, Julianne! I suspect you got hurt due to some grain in the photo. I've discovered that using a soft paintbrush at about 25% opacity to paint over grainy areas really does the trick - for example in the tiger's mouth, on his teeth, in his eyes, and on his nose. It gives a sleek, silky looks without looking fake. I also think you may have cropped just a little bit tightly on this one - I wish there was some negative space around his whiskers.
I think Jeffrey [user]levy413[/user] has hit the technicals, which hopefully will help you understand why this placed where it did, and I agree with all he's said. I like the idea that the whiskers are filling the frame, but there's about a fifth of the frame on the right that is empty except for the whiskers, and that's probably just too much for the DNMC police (I don't "do" DNMC, so I can only guess what others were thinking). For me, he's just woken up, and is about to go out to see whether those zoo keepers have done their job and gotten him something to eat. He's not growling, he's starting his morning yawn and a playful, lazy day. Nice.
Julianne, I think the oversharpening comments come from the combination of the lack of detail and the sharp whiskers. I'm guessing people are looking for detail like in this shot:
I think that it's very hard to crop that much out of a frame and still keep details, esp. with a point and shoot that probably doesn't have a world-beating lens. This is one place where more megapixels helps, and where any lack of razor sharpness in the lens comes through. The full-size shot seems to have much more detail than the entry.
As far as filling the frame, face on apparently satisfies more people, esp. if it's black in the small spaces the tiger's face doesn't fill. See the #5 place shot, for example (although I don't think it's that much sharper than yours):
Since all my photo equipment was stolen and I am camera-less, I will spend time now voting...
Interest - 2
Theme Interp - 3
Technical Merit - 3
Personal Bias - 2
TOTAL - 10
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