Misurina
by gadion

Comment:
Congratulations on your ribbon. I look through the top 20 to 40 images from every single challenge and I was curious about something with your entry...Did anybody mention the tilted horizon? Unbelievably, no! I couldn't pass on offering a constructive comment on something that, on one hand, I think is extremely important, but on the other hand, nobody mentioned. So, how important could it be? I still think that it is important and maybe you got away with it because the best reference to judge the horizon, the waterline, was obscured so much. Then again, maybe you got away with it because it is a beautiful picture with a great composition. You certainly deserve points for the low perspective and the composition with the group of flowers bottom right leading your eye to the mountain peak top left. Overall great job, but I felt it would be wrong if the tilted horizon was not mentioned as something that could be improved upon.

PennyClick in the Redwoods
by Bear_Music

Comment:

Originally posted by PennyClick: The only thing is, I don't particularly "like" being photographed

Yeah, that's for sure! I don't dare unleash the collection of yet unpublished photos from our trip in The British Virgin Islands...and there are some good ones in there.

Yosemite Valley
by william88

Comment:
Congratulations on the ribbon, but most people who don't completely fill in the details will leave out the location. The first question that came to my mind, however, was about shutter speed to capture the water the way you did.

Tractor Surgery
by NikonJeb

Comment:
Congratulations Jeb! I'm very happy to see you get the blue.

Oooh....this is gunna hurt!
by Judi

Comment:
Congratulations Judi on your first blue in a Free Study. There's no doubt that there will be more of them to come.

I love this shot...from the freeze frame still of the flying dirt in capture to the excellent post processing that fixates my eye on the cowboy in the center. This is a fantastic image that deserves it's top placing here.

Napoli
by Rino63

Comment:
Hey Gennaro, big, BIG, congratulations on your first blue ribbon!!! I'm very happy for you. This is a fantastic shot and definitely deserved the blue.

vawendy
by jcar

Comment:
This shot is composed very well using the rule of thirds, from her head and down to her elbow in the left third, her arm makes a nice leading line to the camera in the right third. Good job catching this photographer "chimping" (if you don't know, ask her ;).

If you have a flash diffuser it would help to minimize the sharp shadows that resulted from having the flash so close. Although the lighting resulted in the distinct shadows it also somehow nicely gave her an outline in her hair that did a good job as backlighting. It worked well here to keep her head from blending in too much with the black background.

100M Hurdles
by MattO

Comment:
Congratulations, Matt, on your first ribbon. It looks like we were both upstaged though.

Inner Demon
by JPR

Comment:
THIS is a really cool shot!

Zen Candle
by KevinSLR

Comment:
In response to your request for comments on this picture and what you can do to improve on your photography in general, I offer the following: Getting good and correctly exposed of any shot that includes a bright light source such as a flame is very difficult, but you have managed to get pretty good exposure here. My immediate reaction to this image, however, is that I want to see more. I think that this is too close of a shot and would have been better not cropped so closely and maybe it would have been better taken at a lower angle. The top leaf exiting the frame bothers me and it would frame the image nicely if the whole leaf was included. The container is there and at the same time it isn̢۪t which makes me wonder, again, what exactly it is. As the picture stands right now it is boring (sorry for being blunt).

As for your other request, how to improve your photography: You̢۪re doing it. Keep entering challenges and ask for critiques if you don̢۪t get them. Keep in mind, though, that this challenge had a ton of entries due to the DPL. There weren̢۪t enough comments to go around and the lower scoring shots don̢۪t usually get comments that help much if they get any comments at all.

Peruse other images and see what did well and what scored poorly (start with the top and bottom 20%) and read the comments to understand why they placed where they did. Read up on the principles of composition and exposure and learn them well. Also, understand and learn how to use your camera in manual mode, or at least aperture and shutter priority.

I could keep going but I̢۪ll let you get started here and let someone else pick up where I left off. Good luck and keep entering challenges.