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As soon as the judges have made their top ten selections, their critiques will be added to this thread. The voting poll will be posted at that time also. In the meantime, post your own personal feedback and favorites here!

The challenge theme was: Illustrating Text - A Dream Within A Dream
Your judges were:
__________________________________________________ _____________
thebigsky - Feedback

#4 - PaulThomasMcKee - Hypnagogic state. Is reality naught but hallucination?

Subject, composition, crop and treatment all work here to produce a truly haunting and memorable image, powerful and emotive.

#5 - VelvtRide - Anguish
Good to see a contemporary take on the theme, made me think about dreams, aspirations, regrets and I liked the visual balance in this
composition.

#6 - kevXman - Enjoy today, tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Ok, I admit it I'm a sucker for benches and paths, I think the effect works well here, giving a dreamlike feeling to the image, an ethereal
quality and a narrative with a touch of mystery, very engaging.

#21 - Brundige - A maze of dreams

This works very well for me on many levels, personally these harsh, stark barriers remind me of the walls that seem to suddenly close in on you
in your mind when suffering great loss and grief, there is a way out but it seems impossible to find, the challenging placement of the
subject/focal point strongly emphasis the feeling of being small and lost, and the proximity of the front wall almost makes the viewer feel
they are shut out and unable to help, impressive stuff.

#25 - The Curious Camel - Transition...
A strong, emotive image, allowing the viewer to share an intimate moment, lovely soft light and technically very strong.

#26 - Eoren1 - How they creep; Through my fingers to the deep
Simple and effective, I like the composition and narrative.

27. AaronNelson - Amid Dreams We Wait
Firstly a lovely visual feast, technically strong, great composition and then there are plenty of details in there for the viewer, for me a
journey through time, the stars from the very beginnings of the universe to the age old weathered rock to the relative transience of the trees
and their new growth, gorgeous.

28. Sherstone - The Abyss
I don't think it's a secret that I'm no great fan of composites but when they are used well to produce an image as strong as this I can only
admire the work that's gone into producing the final result. Everything just works here resulting in a powerful, engaging image that you keep
coming back to, great stuff.

35. sbarge - Shattered Dreams
Good narrative, composition, I like the square crop and strong message delivered by this image.

39. Travis - A Mother's Nightmare: The Baby Collector

Supremely creepy, does what every good photograph should do, engages the viewer in an emotional manner, pulls you in and makes you think, very
strong stuff.

__________________________________________________ _____________
Greensquared - Feedback

#4 - PaulThomasMcKee - Hypnagogic state. Is reality naught but hallucination?
I really liked the feel of this. Descriptive, yet still open for further interpretation. Well done.

#6 - KevXmas - Enjoy today, tomorrow is not guaranteed
A quiet feel with a strong message. Really, really nice.

#8 - SherwinJames - connecting to a dream
Awesome composition and light. Great emotion and technically sound.

#11 - Grly - Everything has slipped away
Really nice simple yet strong comp. Very nice.

#16 - richtersl - Lost Love
Love it! Very dreamy feel with darker emotive undertones.

#27 - AaronNelson - Amid Dreams We Wait
Superb!

#28 - sherstone - The Abyss
Absolutely oustanding. I cannot even describe how extremely well done this is, both in idea and in execution. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

#33 - ifocus - The lost hope
I love this. Heavyness with the perfect "light at the end of the tunnel". I could look at this one for quite some time.

#34 - Llywellyn - Happily Never After
Nice work with the combined IR and aged feel.

#45 - Roaddog 52 - River of life, the thin line between nothing and eternity
This one totally captivated me and struck me very close to an image I had in my head with this poem. When you look at any particular area, it seems to come more into focus, but as a whole, it is very unclear.

This has been the toughest round so far IMHO and I think that the low number of entries reflects that.

Here's my top 9. By far my top pick was from Grly - "Everything has slipped away" which I felt was such a simple yet powerful image it really blew me away.



Good luck everyone.

Very challenging round! Hard to pick my top ten, as usual.



Good luck to everyone!

— Kevin

These, in my view, best captured the spirit of the poem:



It was a challenging challenge.

Dan

Originally Posted by pemmett This has been the toughest round so far IMHO and I think that the low number of entries reflects that. Here's my top 9. By far my top pick was from Grly - "Everything has slipped away" which I felt was such a simple yet powerful image it really blew me away. Good luck everyone.

Wow! I am not even sure what to say! Thank you for sharing how my image made you feel. It's fantastic to receive this kind of feedback! You have just made my day :)

Lot's of great entries! I will have to post my top 10 later. I really wanted to join in this round, had an idea, a model, everything----But, became ill around the time I had set to shoot, and was unable to do it . I might still try it for myself. I really liked the concept this round. Oh well....on to the next round!

What a tough challenge. Congratulations to all who participated!! My favorite 7 in order of entry:

#3 My Heart cries out by JAG
#6 Enjoy today, tomorrow is not guaranteed by KevXman
#9 Gothic dreamer by divamum
#11 Everything has slipped away by Grly
#16 Lost Love by richtersl
#26 How they creep; Through my fingers to the deep by eoren1
#34 Happily Never After by Llywellyn

Stephanie

I LOVED this round. Hard, yes, but (possibly because my brain still hasn't made the photographer's jump to thinking exclusively visually and am still rather word-bound) I found text a wonderful starting point which filled me with more ideas than I had time or skill to implement.

My top 10. Even though there were fewer entries than the last couple of rounds, I still found it very hard to select; there were several other images that I really liked and could easily have included instead of some of these -there were definitely more than 10 contenders for the top 10 IMO. There were also several images which I liked but I couldn't relate to the text and so I had to rule them out.

In order of posting:

Lost Time (Ilbcnu)
Anguish (Velvtride)
Enjoy today, tomorrow is not guaranteed (KevXman)
Melting Reality (Woman with a Camera)
Connecting to a Dream (Sherwin James)
7th Plane (Pyroprints)
Lost Love (Richtersl)
Transition (The Curious Camel)
The Abyss (Sherstone)
Slipping Away (Swintophoto)


Images I loved but that didn't quite make the theme for me (but I thought they were so cool I'll give them their own separate category :)
Slipping away (grly)
Happily Never After (llewellyn)
A maze of dreamns (Brundige)



Behind the Scenes (should this be another thread, or is here ok?)

As I've written (babbled!) about in other threads, limitations on my time in the last two weeks (as well as equipment, and insufficient technique to turn my ideas into quality pictures) meant that I never got to doing the other ideas in my head, a couple of which I'm happy to see that other people also had and DID turn into pictures!

Some of the ideas that never made it to life:

- the "kiss upon the brow" immediately made my mind jump to a child, somehow, and I wanted to incorporate that. One idea was me looking into a mirror but having the reflection be my daughter's face (we look very alike) and title it something like "Looking back" or "Turn back the clock" but there was never a time in this period to set it up as a shoot and get the images (plus I question whether my limited skills and lighting equipment could have created what I wanted to see).

- I also thought of using her as a model of a dying or dead child laid out in a bed, set-dressed and costumed Victorian style (although I think it would make a good illustrative image, this creeped me out too much to even consider doing it in reality. I'm not superstitious, but the musicians among us will know what I mean if I say I kept thinking about Kindertotenlieder and it just weirded me out too much!).

- Then I thought of maybe dressing up my husband in a fedora and trenchcoat and have him "saying goodby" to sleeping child, but neither of them were ever available at the same time to model it, so that one never made it to life either. I also thought of trying to get a shot of a street person, or a military cemetary (both of which I see other folks did).

- the dollar store is filled with Halloween stuff at the moment, and there was a glowstick necklace in the shape of a heart - I even tried shooting that so I could make it a "Tell Tale Heart" but it didn't look at all the way I hoped it would when photographed (it just looked cheap and like what it was instead of the spooky glowing I'd hoped for!), and it wasn't a strong enough starting point to justify spending lots of time tweaking it.

The Poe grave, since it's nearby, was the first practical and do-able thought I had. My initial plan - before I saw the reality - was just to get a really good photo of that in isolation, but it is in possibly the LEAST photogenic place you can imagine! Busy street to one side, informational placards all around, and barely any space to step back from it and get a good angle from any side (and I don't have a wide angle lens - I was smashed against plants and walls to get these ) PLUS... we made the trip down there only to arrive in the middle of a wedding reception at the hall - it was all I could do to grab the quick shots I got since guests were milling around throughout - it was kind of funny, really!! Westminster Hall itself is great - if the crypts had been open I would have taken the tour and gone down there for pictures - but alas... they stop letting the general public into the space in September :(





Anyway, at that point I realised I wasn't going to have much more shooting time, and would have to come up with a way of transforming the grave images into something ... and the hourgrlass dropped into my mind. I figured since it was Poe that surreal and spooky would be a reasonable jump, so decided to abandon all thoughts of realism and go for it as a composite. Then I couldn't find a pretty - or large enough - hourglass, and realised this was going to be an exercise in "making do" on this occasion, so in the end I decided to consider it an exercise in learning photoshop and just do as much with it as I could. I'm still not satisfied with the final image (oh, how I wanted a pretty hourglass!), but as a PS exercise it was a total success because I know SO much more about how to use the program than I did two weeks ago!

In any case, I really enjoyed this challenge. More please!!!

Another fun round! Everyone had wonderful entries. I like to see all the different interpretations :)

Here are my top picks

Gosh there we so many that where great its impossible to make it down to a few.... Nice work everyone! Thank you to all who included mine in their favs.

For a round that started off as somewhat of a sleeper, it was anything but that! Divamum, cmkultradome, dplumer, KevXMan, thanks for including my pic in your favorites.

Below are my favorites. I had a hard time keeping it to just 10.

This was a hard round. Here is my top ten. All the entries were fantastic!

Originally Posted by dlplumer These, in my view, best captured the spirit of the poem: It was a challenging challenge. Dan

Thank you very much for including mine in your top picks.

Originally Posted by divamum I LOVED this round. Hard, yes, but (possibly because my brain still hasn't made the photographer's jump to thinking exclusively visually and am still rather word-bound) I found text a wonderful starting point which filled me with more ideas than I had time or skill to implement. My top 10. Even though there were fewer entries than the last couple of rounds, I still found it very hard to select; there were several other images that I really liked and could easily have included instead of some of these -there were definitely more than 10 contenders for the top 10 IMO. There were also several images which I liked but I couldn't relate to the text and so I had to rule them out. In order of posting: Lost Time (Ilbcnu) Anguish (Velvtride) Enjoy today, tomorrow is not guaranteed (KevXman) Melting Reality (Woman with a Camera) Connecting to a Dream (Sherwin James) 7th Plane (Pyroprints) Lost Love (Richtersl) Transition (The Curious Camel) The Abyss (Sherstone) Slipping Away (Swintophoto) Images I loved but that didn't quite make the theme for me (but I thought they were so cool I'll give them their own separate category :) Slipping away (grly) Happily Never After (llewellyn) A maze of dreamns (Brundige) In any case, I really enjoyed this challenge. More please!!!

Thank you very much for including mine in your top picks.

Thanks to KevXman, divamum, JAG and richtersl for including me in their favs! I have had extremely limited 'net access for the past month, so forgive me for not being as up to date for this challenge and including my favs.

Wonderful job to everyone and good luck!

Thanks to
Ritchers,
divamum,
KevXman,
and Jag for including me in your top ten. I am honored...


Peace always, Gail

This was incredibly tough to judge, and thankfully I was on a cruise ship for most of the challenge because it would have driven me insane trying to come up with a suitable entry :)

Although there were a large number of very strong pics entered that I really liked, only two immediately reached out and grabbed me as being visually stunning and fitting the theme to a tee... Nikolai's and Sherstone's entries.

Thank you pemmett, KevXman, dlplumer, divamum and WomanWithACamera for including me in your top / favorite picks. I feel privileged to be part of such an outstanding group of photographers!!

Hard competition and so many different ways to interpret the poem! Finally after three tries I came up with my favorites - in no particular order~

Thank You JAG. As a complete noob and coming in, from all accounts, to one of the hardest challenges yet, I'm honored to even be mentioned. You guys have some serious, serious talent. This is a ton of fun! Can't wait for 11!

Thank you pemmet, dlplumer, richtersl, and WomanWithACamera for including mine your top picks (Is there a pun there? ). This was an incredibly difficult challenge and I amazed at the entries. I haven't had time to narrow down my list yet but hopefully I'll get to it this evening. Good luck to all!