I shot this from my room. Used the window screen to create the grid effect. Duotoned with shades of green. Then played around with brightness, contrast, and unsharp mask until I got it looking the way I wanted.
This inspiration for this was of course the green code of the matrix, as well as the "welcome to the desert of the real" scene, in which the screen has artificial gridlines and disturbances flash across it. The effects of compression on the grid of the window screen helped create the effect I was going for.
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Place: 58 out of 140 Avg (all users): 5.0594 Avg (commenters): 5.5714 Avg (participants): 5.1154 Avg (non-participants): 5.0242 Views since voting: 890 Votes: 202 Comments: 8 Favorites: 0
When I critique for the club, I like to go to the photographer's portfolio to look at other pictures they have done. With you, I was impressed with what I saw considering you have just starting with photography less than a year ago. You have a lot of diversity and I commend you for always trying new things. You are developing a keen eye. You also seem to express a lot of emotion through your pictures.
Now...onto the picture at hand.
Challenge: Please forgive me. I'm not VERY familiar with the Matrix. When this topic came up for the challenge, I was stumped because I had not seen the movie. Thank goodness that my friend had the DVD of the first one and I watched it. I actually didn't really care for the movie, but I got an idea of what it was about. I haven't seen the sequel. From what I understood, the gist of the movie was about how mankind and its environment have been dominated by computers. At this point, I still don't understand why they put a green hue to it, but that's beside the point. Yes, in my limited understanding of movie, I do believe that you have met the challenge well:)
Composition: I'm fighting with myself wondering if there should be more houses in your picture to give it more of a sense of community. It looks like you live in a nice neighborhood where the houses are spread out. Reguardless of my internal struggle here, your picture DOES make the point. Perhaps if you were to have lowered your shot a little to get more of the closest house on the right, it would have helped. I like the effect the screen made. It was what made you picture. Very good idea. It was also fortunate that you had such nice clouds the day you took this. Again, it wouldn't be the same without them.
Technical: The lighting and contrast is great with this photo but my biggest and only complaint is with the green. Although I know that the green is supposed to give it the movie "Matrix-y" feel, I think that it is just too bright of green. Before I suggest anything, I usually take the picture and play around with it a little. In your case, I just de-saturated it a little and it came out better to my taste. Also, just for giggles, I ran it through Neat Image. It softened it a little and looks over processed but it came out kind of cool. It got rid of some of the distracting noise.
Overall: During the voting phase, I scored your picture a 4. Now that I've studied it further, I apologize for not scoring it higher. I do believe that I was turned off by the stark green and didn't studied it further at the time as I should have.
As a whole, I do like your pictures...in and outside of the challenges. Keep up the good work! I'll be anxious to see what more you come up with.
Ahhhh what an idea to use a screen door to create this effect. I used it once for differnt effect in another challenge. Pity, IMO, the subject should be more selective.
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