@Ta_whirimatea A little gentle rain doesn’t much soften the edges of this stark black-and-white, which gives it a bit of noir feeling for me — gives me a feeling of tension. I like the upper 2/3s of the picture more than the plain-ish lower 1/3
@goldmac2006 Fun. Forum-appropriate. I love pictures like this that remind you to see what’s actually around you
@thirsty_monk Drama hidden by dramatic clouds. The blues suggest we’re transitioning to night, or maybe it’s before daybreak. Love the “grounding” of the blue foothills at the bottom. I like that this picture is also not sharpened
@C0ncreteBl0nde A strong, stark image. I really like how the processing of this picture (I’ll assume it wasn’t SOOC) makes the leaves / flowers into a staccato. A nice balance of dark and light too
@ToddH Here we have a black-and-white with a more gentle conversion, less hard edges. The perspective terrifically highlights the precariousness of this dwelling … Outer Banks, maybe? Love the gull punctuation. Personally I almost always straighten my horizons, especially when they are — as in this picture — close to level but not. BUT, OTOH, maybe the skew is a choice here in service of this precarious theme, and indeed adds to a kind of forced perspective to the left. Edit: I tried the photo with a level horizon and it wrecked the perspective effect for me; it just made the house look like a lunar lander. Sticky widget, as skewed horizons are a stick in the eye for me. Would be fun to make a poll and see what others think
@oblomow Ahh. Oooh. Ahh. So good. And the monochrome adds to the effect. Perfect framing. Nice (and a nice job with regards to whomever built this)
@OldMacs4Me Thank you for your use of color (I have a bias towards color.) Do we have a little bit of not-monochrome, complementary color in the lower right corner? Rules can be broken for good reason; I do like how that moment activates a pretty yet otherwise unremarkable dusk
@someoldguy A beautiful moment with harsh sun tamed, shadows helpfully open, while the foreground vegetation isn’t blown out. Nicely handled. I like this vignette
@Snowlover Spent. Spent? In school we used to talk about the power of “repetition and difference” which you have here. Given how many other entries tired a black-and-white approach, I wonder if it wouldn’t be interesting to try with this image
@Q-Dog I do like the moon with clouds … I’m always forgetting how to meter for it. Get any figure at all on the moon and the clouds disappear; meter for the clouds and the moon blows out. Sure you can pull the highlights, but with mixed results (and I have not found myself tempted by HDR, which is what I guess HDR was invented for … somehow I want to live in my personal dynamic range prison). So clouds, a moon that feels like its absorbing the closest clouds, and some dark foliage bleeding off to the left. All the action’s on the left here; maybe crop square? The right side of image seems to be less compelling
@chown33 Another moonrise, now silhouetting the tree with its fine foliage … again, the moon alone in the sky can be so hard to meter for. Intrigued by the pink cast to this image … we’re at dusk? Assuming it wasn’t added in post it’s fun to catch unusual skies
OK OK -- lots of nice submissions. Let's go with:
3rd
@C0ncreteBl0nde and
@someoldguy
2nd
@ToddH and
@oblomow
1st
@thirsty_monk
In the end, color for the win
