I was out trying to find something to shoot when I came upon a field of yellow flowers. I didn't have any idea's for the challenge but instead just thought I could get some good shots. As I was snapping photo's and walking through the field I notice a clump of flowers that had 2 or 3 white ones in this huge field of yellow and the first thing I thought was, "hey this could work for the puzzle challenge because this is something that is puzzling in nature!"
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Place: 148 out of 168 Avg (all users): 4.4581 Avg (commenters): 6.6667 Avg (participants): 4.3571 Avg (non-participants): 4.5041 Views since voting: 1430 Views during voting: 292 Votes: 179 Comments: 11 Favorites: 0
cytoxan Your a good sport and you'll see things will get better with each challenge you enter. You begin to figure out what works here and what doesn't. It does NOT mean your shot is not good. Your flowers printed, framed and hung on a wall would be very pretty. Keep your good attitude and keep shooting.
It's been awhile since I have commented or critiqued anyone's photo but here are a few ideas. The lighting seems a bit harsh and there are some serious shadows on the flowers which distract the eye. Perhaps pushing down the flowers/weeds that casted the shadows would have been a corrective measure for that. The border is distracting, too bright and once again grabs the attention of your eye. Tighter crop on the two flowers at 8X10 would have shown more detail but the DoF might not have been as good. I find that not spelling out the idea of your shot in the title helps the observer come to their own conclusions. If your photo doesn't say what the challenge asks for then you will pay for it in votes....and lately I see more critics scoring lower than ever. Anyway, this is my opinion and it's not professional at all. Please feel free to check my portfolio and critique me anytime, I need it too.
I gave it a 5. I understood what you were pointing out, and though it was slightly puzzling, it was not a serious curiosity for me. Mostly, though, I found it an average floral shot. Nothing really seemed to stand out from it. Perhaps the yellow flowers had too much green cast to really stand out. There was not a lot of detail coming through either. A closer shot, showing off the details of that one flower might have had more impact on me. Also, I am not a huge fan of floral shots, so ti has to be really well done to grab my attention. I'm not a big fan of square crops either. I only do them on my own shots when it is the only composition that works for an image.
Flowers are such a common subject that any but the most outstanding shots are bound to gather average-or-below votes at best. This seems like a fairly standard photo to me, even with the shallow DOF. I rarely like "eyedropper" color borders, so that's another negative. I didn't vote on this but would probably have given it a 5 or 4. FYI, I don't give much weight to captions (titles), but I "got" the puzzling idea without it.
I didnt vote on yours but I can see how it could have scored low as I probably would have given it a shoehorn score.
The shot itself is technically fine from my point of view. colours are good, dof is good & the border is nice.
For the challenge though its not a great fit as far as im concerned as it does look like a good shot that you took and decided to enter it in the challenge.
Hope that helps!
Dont give up entering!!
Personally, I think this is pushing it, but I'm going to go with the flow. Fabulous DOF, great colors and I'm always a sucker for square framing. I'm not a fan of big, bright borders though, but be aware that it is a personal bias and I don't think it makes this pic worse.
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