Flower love
by kijt

Comment by KaDi:
Greetings from the Critique Club. The following comments are in response to your request for a critique on your challenge submission. Please feel free to send me a PM concerning my comments.

First let me say that by now I'm sure you've realized that the voters feel your images are too small to really appreciate. There is a good tutorial on resizing images for DPChallenge submissions using PhotoShop. (Look under the "Learn" drop-down menu.) If you are using other software and need help maximizing you images a post in the forums will usually bring replies quite quickly.

The subject of this image seems to be a bee on yellow flowers. The color is strong and interesting. The depth of field keeps the bee in focus while beginning to blur the background.

The composition is rather ordinary. Placing the subject in the center of the frame tends to stop the viewer from exploring the rest of the image. One looks and says, oh it's a bee. Cropping down from the top and in from the right would help move the bee off center and would also eliminate the distraction of the cut-off flower at the top.

The background is blurry helping to keep the eye on the subject. But because there is so much color and texture detail in the background it fights for attention. Ideally you want to eliminate distraction by repositioning so there is a plainer background or waiting for the light to change so the background can be thrown into shadow.

The subject itself begs for the viewer to be closer. It's nice to enjoy the texture and detail of bugs. As a subject for the challenge...well, if the title says it's love it must me, right?

My rule of thumb on images is that everything necessary should be in the image and everything in the image should be necessary.

Overall, it's the sort of image almost everyone with a camera has taken at some time.

I hope you don't find my comments too harsh.
Keep shooting!
--Kadi

Flower love
by kijt

Comment by Antsy:
Lighting is good, nice idea. I only wished it was bigger.

Recycling Drums
by kijt

Comment by BakerBug:
Hello from the Critique Club!

First off, let me say welcome to DPC! I see that this is your first challenge entry.

There are a few things to keep in mind when entering challenges on this site. First of those would be to ensure you use the full image dimensions available to you. This image is only 400 pixels wide, for this challenge you are allowed 640 pixels for your widest dimension. Unfortunately, a lot of people will deduct points from your score just due to the size of your image regardless of how good it is.

Another thing to keep in mind is the challenge description. In my opinion, this photo does not meet the challenge, and I believe your score reflects this.

As to you photo, this image does not do much to capture the viewer's attention or imagination. This is very important if you want your entry to stand out from everyone else's in the challenge.

I hope you are not discouraged by all of this. This is a great site to learn about photography and there are a lot of really good and helpful photographers out there.

Flower love
by kijt

Comment by kreshkin:
I think darkening the background would make this pop more.

Flower love
by kijt

Comment by teto:
Too far away and too small

Flower love
by kijt

Comment by shutterpuppy:
too small - 3

Flower love
by kijt

Comment by urguytony:
haha, i like!

Flower love
by kijt

Comment by Nowhere_Man:
why so small?

Flower love
by kijt

Comment by Knightmoves:
why so small?

Flower love
by kijt

Comment by maxaz1:
a bit small. Would love to see the details.