Please Be Brutally Honest With Me

I entered a photo contest with this photo and didn't even get an honorable mention. Here is a link to the winners and honorable mentions. Please tell me what you think.

http://www.mwvphotocontest.com/winners_2012.php





I love everything about this. The composition, tone. All is fine. Lets just enjoy the pic and not get carried away by result of competition.

Jakop

--
The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.
Steve Lacy quotes

Looks great to me. However, could it be that the contest rules didn't allow processing such as this. The picture looks more like a painting than a photograph the way it's processed.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm not getting carried away I just want to know where I went wrong so I can fix it.

Your photo is excellent digitial art and as attractive, to me, as any of the others. However, what are the rules on how much PS is permissible? I viewed the image at full size and it was subject to some interesting filters.

--
Joe Melillo
WSSA member# 86
http://www.pbase.com/jmelillo/root

Rules say all pp is acceptable.

Thanks. The rules stated any and all pp is acceptable.

Your image is a "nice" image, but not to my liking.  The reason is two fold.  Too much green and it suffocates the centrepiece, the road and bridge.  Secondly I looked at the winners and found that in comparison to your image, the majority of the winners had very strong subject matter.

Green and brown are two very weak colours in unison for photographic purposes (yes you see a lot of green in images but it's balanced by subject matter but very little brown is seen in good images.) I'm not aux fais with your PP techniques, but I decided to just have a play in my PP suite to see if I could make the image a little better to look at given your subject and my earlier comments.

Cropped, editted for auto contrast and auto colour in Picasa3.

The emphasis I feel now falls on the road and the bridge and the reflection with cropping out greenery to left, lower and right cropped out.

Hope this helps.  Yes you did ask

Thane

--
The digital image is a dozen or so words
positioned carefully to paint a picture
that challenges the eye
and tricks the mind
into thinking, light is a title
and the palette a taste bud
worth tasting.

I didn't examine all the rules & methods of voting - but it could be that the people who 'won' got gobs of their friends to vote for their photos. Also, since I don't know the theme, perhaps it wasn't within the framework. By itself, it's a nice photo. I don't think you 'went wrong' at all - it just wasn't in the cards for you to win.

My story: i entered what people told me was a good photo in a local contest. However, it wasn't chosen for anything. While there, I showed a copy of it to one of the judges & asked them why. They told me that, while nice on its own, it didn't fit exactly what they were looking for - it was too dark (it was a silhouette of a native bird @ sunset) and they wanted to see sun, light, nature, etc.

So the best you can do it keep on trying, keep on improving - and enjoy your hobby.

--
Aloha,
jan/aja
***FCAS Member #128, Oly Division***
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&message=14354990
http://aja2.deviantart.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmitchell_photography/

The contest was for a charity calender. You are probably correct. Thanks

I see what you mean Thanks

Technically there's very little wrong, but it doesn't work for me as an image because it tries to draw the eye to two spots at the same time - the opening to the bridge and its reflection are both fighting for the viewer's attention. With scenes like this it is important to instill a sense of balance and harmony in your image, not conflict (regardless of whether you want it to convey 'beauty', 'mystery', 'solitude', 'timelessness' or whatever). A secondary problem that adds to the 'chaos' is that everything including the not-all-that-important foliage is in focus, which doesn't help the viewer to find the subject either.

I don't know what the subject is. The bridge? The road? The puddle?

I really like the PP, but to be honest, it's aesthetically nice, but it doesn't 'pop'.

--
semper ubi sub ubi

Thanks for your honesty.

I thought it was a photo that kept the viewer interested.

Thanks

Were you one of the Judges ?!!!!

I see it's a photo that's not for everyone.

I like the basic concept & PP.  For me, the overhanging tree on the right simply obliterates the covered bridge.  I suspect the only way to eliminate the tree is to get closer to the bridge, but then than means you lose the puddle reflection.  What I noticed in the other photos was a central focus subject, unfettered by other aspects of the scene.  You have too much leaf/tree interference in the subject.  Maybe a 7-14 and standing just in front of the bridge might have done the trick?  Nevertheless, your photo is still quite good & certainly conveys a story of decay & time-wornliness.

--
http://hestamm.smugmug.com

Thanks

I don't know if anyone has noticed that I masked out all pp in the puddle!

I can clearly see you used Topaz Clean for your PP by the way and that you used the "Crisp" filter.

I often use it myself as I like what it does to the fiolage.

Personally I've never entered a contest on this or any other site, recognizing that in many cases perceived beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I would enjoy photographing old covered bridges, but these are sadly absent in Colorado and the west of this country.  Thank you for sharing yours, and I think the setting calls for the subtlety of the colors.  Perhaps others expect HDR and bright colors all the time, I am not entirely sure.  Don't give up and try not to be too frustrated, you'll likely have or will gain valuable insight posing the tag line you did.

--
E-5 and E-620
7-14, 9-18, 11-22, 12-60, 14-42, 14-45, 17.5-45, 18-180, 25, 35, 40-150, 50, 50-200, 70-300, 150

I think it's an excellent photo, one that really captures my attention. I'm not surprised it didn't win a calendar contest though, most calendar shots seem to be very bright and simple, while this is quite complex and a little dark. It is more of a story-telling photo, thus the lack of the "pop" that seems to be the current style. Taste differs, but this picture is very appealing to me.