Thank you to everyone who entered the PROJECT 52-6-3-Color - Blue contest this past. I've learned from this experience and hope to give you inspiration to keep competing.

My personal critiques…

@normhead: Nice a sharp shot. The background contrast though isn't appealing as it's too mottled and grey. A straight profile of animals seems too common. A tilt or head lean to capture a bit of the left eye would've really drawn this picture to me. Positioning of the photo is excellent.

@mtux: You taught me Single In. Thank you. I think the positioning needs to be runner on the left and viewing to the right for greater impact or personal connection. Also, there seems to be too much equality in the spacing above and below the the runner. Crop the top or bottom off some to cut into the runner more. Maybe crop off the left half as well to really draw the eyes to the runner, which does seem to be your real focus.

@rbefly: Coolio. You had me going huh trying to sort this one out. Could've been carpet. The problem is the twigs make it feel dirty. I also think the bottom sunshine is distracting of the shading you mainly were trying to capture. Try cropping it out. Good color accuracy.

@tessfully: Sweet, beautiful nature formation. Love the clarity. Getting closer for more detail and setting your focal point or visual center for something not picture centered would give more impact.

@Tamia: Nice framing, position, colors. I think shooting this during the golden hours would be a nice visual impact.

@noelcmn: This is a tough shot to pull off. Center/center is typical. To much side to side looks off. I feel it's so close, but not sure how to adjust your positioning for more impact. When seeing this though, I'm not sure what the story is being told. I'm wondering what the view from the other direction looks like. I wonder if a setting or raising sun silhouette could've given this more impact. Maybe more starkness in the background.

@ramseybuckeye: I'm not always looking for these see throughs. When I catch others doing them, I'm happy for them. I think the fore hole is too centered in the image. I wonder how focusing on the back side of the fore hole would do for the visual impact. Was there anything of interest that could've been caught through the hole by changing your vertical plane? I finally caught that hanging bark on the right. I think shift the picture are more to the right and up so that the hole and the bark become abstract art would liven this up.

@patrick9: This leaves me wondering what it is initially. Soon, I'm distracted by the blurriness of the left draped fabric. The backlighting is kind of cool, but maybe should be coming more across the silverware handle. Catching the text in the acrylic is slick. Because this is a long object, I'd think shooting portrait in the same direction would carry more emphasis. The landscape positioning lessens the visual impact. Rotate the camera 90º from this same point, keeping the bottom left how it is now and experiment with vertical positioning and angle.

@Maria27: Childhood again! It's fun to see adults shooting toys. The view seems too flat, maybe more angle down or come up would improve perspective. I find the aperture too in between. The out of focus aren't out of focus enough or the picture as a whole isn't focused well enough. Turn the heads of the little men into the camera lens with a body twist to boot. Bring some more humor out of this.

Winners…

Third: @mtux


Second: @Tamia


First and next P52-6 judge: @tessfully



After seeing these, I thinking I'm readily of the step closer school. See next post cropping examples.

[comprock]

Here's my quick crops on how I think composition could've been improved for a few contestants.

[Maria27]

Thanks for judging, Comprock, and for taking the time to comment.
Congrats to Tess, Tamia and mtux on the terrific shots.
Looking forward to the B&W challenge

[patrick9]

Thanks for taking the time to comment and for judging Comprock. This was actually a bottle of window cleaner on a shelf in my garage ..
Congratulations Tess on the win and to Tamia and mtux on 2nd and 3rd places

[rbefly]

Thanks to comprock for hosting, judging and commentary, another fun challenge.
Congratulations Tess, Tamia and mtux! Well done by all.
Ron

[Tamia]

Congratulations Tess and Mtux, and thanks, Comprock, for 2nd, and for your excellent job of commenting and judging. Well done!

[noelcmn]

Congratulations Tess- Can't really compete with that shot-its simply awesome! And of course to Mtux and Tamia. Thanks are due to Comprock- Wow you've certainly did some hard work on judging on this one, constructive and helpful comments.
A note on my photo- these are Water Pipes, on a construction site, and I had to get permission to be on the site, had to wear a reflective jacket, industrial shoes, and that hard hat. These pipes are about 20-30 meter long and about 1.6 meters in Diameter. Not exactly the kind of thing one can move around. and as they were lying in a north/south direction, no chance of a sunset or anything like that. Movement inside the pipe is very limited, and the angle that I got there is about the best I could manage and that without a tripod. Weeds on the one end and sand heaps on the other end which is why I placed the red hat there-to create some interest. BTW, I got myself and the camera bag pretty dirty with all that dust and sand inside the pipes. They have been lying around since at least September of last year. It is a rather huge project to get these installed- and will probably take at least another year.

[comprock]

@noelcmn, all: Thank you for the hard work and compliments. I'm trying to get much better at what I'm doing very quickly by being critical of myself for what works or not. Also, those freaking 100+ like blurry Facebook shots annoy the crap out of me. So when my stuff goes up, I want it good.

Nice effort for putting into the shots. It does seem the better ones come of doing something out of our normal boundaries.

[tessfully]

Thank you for the honour comprock! And thanks to everyone for your kind remarks. Also, congrats mtux and Tamia. I am looking forward to this week's black and white challenge.

[ramseybuckeye]

Congratulations Tess, and also Tamia and mtux. Thanks for judging Comprock, good comment, I seldom center a subject like that, but it really wasn't that interesting anyway, and we haven't had much in the way of color lately, except an occasional sky, just miles and miles of snow.

[mtux]

Oh, I had totally forgot about checking results of last week's challenge
Thank you so much Michael for your effort on commenting and also suggesting a better crop. also placing my shot at third place.
Hmm, I thought the blue is so bold in that dull day, that will caught your eye nevertheless and I didn't even think about cropping the shot, because I wanted to have that road in shot. But I agree that if the jogger was on the left side, it could make a better shot.

Congrats to Tamia and Tess too.

[comprock]

@mtux, sure thing. Even stepping a few times to the right could've got you the path and jogger. Thinking about that capture, might've bumped you one spot.