I agree with all of the above. I really like the vignette effect. Not easy to do on a Zone 5 or 6 sky without lots of clouds. Quiet inspiration.

Very Cool. I'm curious as to what a shot would look like if the tree was directly in front of the sun.

Way cool shot, Clyde. Great in every category listed.

great shot!
and amazing silhouette!
the tree almost looks like it belongs in a dr.seuss book
:]

Great silhouette and light. Love your choice of b&w :)

very great comp, nice color
congrats

Great place for shootin'. It is botanical garden?
Try, some day, make this photo a little bit contrast in PS (level (poin of white & black)), also You can make it more saturationed!

This was taken at the Huntington Library Cactus Gardens in San Marion, CA.

This is a beauty. Looks like something from The Prisoner or something.

The backlighting gives a great glow to the cacti

Looks like a couple of aliens getting together for a speech by their leader... Great stuff.

I don't think that's the cutted haead of his friend... I think it is it's own! :p

Tamara, you are correct. Only one fish here, ugh! At least he got to see his own end...

Hi,

I love the detail in the mouth. I would have gone for a major crop and come in on that mouth - a completely different photo to be sure.

Best,
jon

I agree that this is both a disturbing and interesting shot. Perhaps, though, I would like to see a little more of the "guts" side because the detail there looks absolutely fabulous. Well seen and taken.

I can't get my head round whether this is utterly beautiful or utterly disgusting. Very well done.

Strange subject, very interesting. It looked like a face in the thumbnail. I like the composition and the tonal range. The color does feel strange, but this may well be what it looks like??

It does look like a face and I have captioned it " The Look". Thanks for your comments!

I think you did the purple cast on purpose? Anyway, the whole scene feels a bit stange imo. I don't know exactly where I'm looking at. Maybe zoom out a bit would be good, 'couse it would show the scale of your subject - I do miss that in your image.

Interesting subject and treatment here Apurva. I like the off-balance composition that you have used, and the colour cast issue that others mention is not so big for me (but that might be my monitor). Also, as Tamara says, it would be good to get an idea of scale projected with the image.

Again, I don't have trouble with the scale. Since the holes are apparently doors or windows, the scale is clear to me.
And it does look like a face. I like it.

I like this photo. The blurred flowers in the foreground send my eyes immediately to the posts and help establish depth in the picture. Having said that, the posts are only mildly interesting in and of themselves. I think this photo would be improved if there was some additional point of interest located next to the posts...perhaps a young girl reaching down to pick one of the flowers, or an old gardener leaning on a rake. The photo is fine as is, just able to be so much more. By the way, I like the colors in this garden. I bet it's a nice place to visit.

Thank you both for your comments.
Jeff, I agree with you about the photo needing another subject. I originally took this photograph because of the shadows.

I am not so sure that this does need anything else. I agree that the colours and the sense of depth are very well composed here. Perhaps the only thing that I seem to stumble across is the post lined up with the tree trunk, maybe a step or two to the right would have allowed the tree to shine beyond the posts.

when I see the photo, it seems that columns are the main subject. There are more interesting elements in the image but they are out of focus (flowers) or they are very poorly contrasted (tree), so you look at the columns again at the end. And columns aren't interesting...

Sorry, that's my opinion :)

I don't think the picture needs more, I'ld rather go for less. Crop off the horizontal beams in the top of the picture, and not only the whole things gets an abstract quality, but also the tree jumps up in the attention. I don't think it'ld make for a perfect picture, but it would definitely be an improvement, IMHO.

Hello Ana, Thank you for your opinion.
I agree about the position of the bird, but it was a quick catch! He was gone in an instant!

I believe I was using a 300mm, so the focus was all on the bird, and not the scene.
Thank you again.

Very beautiful and full of the wonder of the moment. I really like the framing and use of negative space. Nice work, in my opinion.

Jon

The feel of this shot is very striking, although you might wish for the bird to be postioned differently. I am hopeless at the ps thing, but I would be interesting to see the effect on the composition if you cut the bird and flip it 180 so that it is flying into, rather than out of frame (it looks relatively easy with such a stark background). Still, it is wonderful as is.

oh,yeah, it would be quite easy to flip the bird (ha ha ha)

:)

At first I thought, too much grey sky. But then I read Ana's comment (in as much as I understand Spanish). Held my hand in front of the bottom left for an instance, and suddenly the whole thing worked.
So, too bad about that patch of grass. But since birds don't wait until you get a nice frame on them, it's still a great picture.

I love playing with shots like this - close ups of faces, eyes. Reminds me of one of my shots! www.vazaar.com/user:mrsmorunion/photos/id:16025/

Well done.

Nice macro but a bit too saturated for me...

wonderful! i like the saturation - it adds to the intensity.

Just great work! Really like what you have done with the saturation - this really grabs the viewer - powerful shot.

Best,
Jon

Great photo, but I would have cropped it on the left. Either just cut off the ear, or even go as far as cutting just left of the eyelashes. The left side of the picture has too little interest to offer, given the superb right side. The ear is distracting for me.

I also agree with Tamara that this is a very strong shot and your use of focus and framing works very well. I also like that you have used high key exposure to very good effect. Well done.

Stunning...powerful... I love it in B&W. I agree that it does show the wild cat inside a domestic. beautiful

from the thumbnail i thought it was a wild cat. nice capture

im a sucker for cat shots. majestic and wild. love your focus here. nice tone.

How did you make the cat sit still and not sniff at the lens or something? Great shot.

Nice "firey" treatment Will. I like it all except in the exposed sky I would like to see some color not pure white. Maybe a little pass thru Lens Distortion correction also?

looks quite smooth and warm...
well i prever from forest pictures theese melancholic black and white pictures, but this one is also cool

I think that the perspective and colours work exceptionally well here to convey a sense of "autumn". The shadows also play off nicely with the backlighting and dark trunks to help set the mood of the sun still low in the sky. Nice work.

oo
i love love love this shot!
ive always wanted to spend a fall in a place like this...
youve captured the very essence of the season..
great shot!

Lighting and colors are fantastic. It's just the shame the sky is a bit blown out, but even then, it is still a very nice picture.

Is this a silver based b&w negative?? Because ICE is know not to work at all for b&w negatives. The only b&w negatives that can be cleaned with ICE are the C-41 process, dye based negatives, I thought?? When I try to force ICE on with my Nikon Coolscan and then scan a TriX or FP4 negative the results are totally useless.

Oh yeah I didn't think about that, yeah, this isn't a real B/W negative. It's one of those Kodak fake B/W negatives which are regularly processed C-41.
Interesting that ICE doesn't work with real B/W negatives, thanks for the information.

hey die kratzer machen das bild erst toll ;) ohne siehts eher langweilig aus...

Gee, I get hammered for having *real* grain evident in scans of FP4 and HP5 and then this!! The problem (if you can call it that) is C41 b&w negs tend to have very smooth tonal range, making it very difficult to fake the vintage look. I like the perspective you have of the subject, but there are just too many inconsistencies to be convincing in a vintage sense because it is too polished (and why does a hair or some other dirt on a neg - shown as a white line - skip the dark bridge????).

Yeah I see what you mean, and I agree, but considering it's small age of 3 years I'd say this negative looks pretty vintage :)