Venezia
by salmiakki

Comment:
This image is fantastic! The sort of image that if I's looking to spend money on prints right now, I'd happily pay for. I also much prefer it you your original, not matter what you might think of it =).

Squirrels & Trees
by theluissales

Comment:
Love the bokeh in this.

Welcoming Santa
by jagar

Comment:
Well I'm guessing jagar for this one. If I'm wrong (in which case I'll eat my proverbial hat), it's definitely in his style. Either way, great image! Not voting but I hope it does well (would be an 8 if I were)!

Stripes Vs Grids: Listening to the sound of grass
by mcaldo

Comment:
...4.9? I'm shocked. The concept of freedom looses all meaning without the existence of confinement - to me this photo expresses that concept clearly and impactfully conveys the zebras longing for freedom. On top of that it's a great composition with the juxtaposition of the tiles, zebra and cage. I just wish the cage/tiles were aligned with the frame (obviously without re-shooting this is unfortunately not possible in basic editing).

Freedom for the condemned
by Giles

Comment:
Hmm, I think you're always going to get a few low votes here for shooting slightly outside the box on any challenge, and a few more for having a morbid subject. Taking that in to account though I still think for a photo designed to express freedom there should be more information in the scene. As it is (at least to me), the image only makes sense when coupled with the title. It'd be nice for the title to perhaps compliment the image, but for the image to be able to stand on its own in this category.

Subject aside though I think the image is decent and the simplicity is nice, but outside of a series (where it could perhaps work quite well) I think the simplicity also lets it down - there's no "wow" factor or hook, which when asking people to rate an image on a scale of 1-10 makes it hard to find a reason why this image should get higher than average marks against many other well executed photos. In this instance I look at the photo, burn the image in to my brain, but then there's nothing left to study that'd make me want to return to look at it again (which is a quality I tend to expect at the very least from all my >6 votes).

This is my take on it anyway. The problem with photography is it's highly subjective and the popular vote isn't always right. I hope getting a different viewpoint is helpful though.

london3
by HawkinsT

Comment:

Originally posted by Tiny: You have super Blacks and Whites on all these images. Any special processing here ? Any hints / tips welcome.

Thanks, these are the first b&w's I've done in photoshop instead of lightroom or silver efex - trying to get a bit more control over my processing while going for something simple and high contrast. I'm pleased with how they turned out and the steps are pretty simple:

Image > Mode > Lab Color
Channels > Lightness
Image > Mode > Grayscale (discard other channels)
Sharpen via High Pass layer
Levels
Curves
Brightness/Contrast

The two exceptions to this are my shot of the houses or parliament which used the silver efex pro preset "High Structure (Harsh)", which is essentially a faux-hdr b&w effect, reducing the dynamic range of the image first, and my shot of the dog, which is straight from the camera (shooting RAW+jpeg) with my picture style on a custom monochrome setting (contrast: max, shaprening: max) - which I think generally produces good results in large range of situations.

london3
by HawkinsT

Comment:

Originally posted by salmiakki: Ah, one of my favourite spots in London for Architecture pics, would love to go there at night From the same B&W side challenge

Nice reflections in yours. Yeah, I wish this were an original image, though there were at least two other people with cameras there taking the same shot during the time I was there. Unfortunately I had a train to catch so couldn't spend as long round there as I would have liked - but that gives me something still to do next time I guess =).

pOlymOrphOnuclear with a chewy caramel centre
by daisydavid

Comment:
One of my two 8's (highest score I gave in this challenge). How this was so under-appreciated I don't know. Congrats on taking such a great image anyway!

IMG_2178
by HawkinsT

Comment:
40 year old glass (cost the same as my Sigma 10-20mm)... <3 ebay =).

one eight zero
by tome

Comment:
Great image and very deserving of its score. There are so many landscapes on this site it's nice to see such an original one. The grey tones work well too I think, the beauty of this image for me is in its well-defined minimalism.