DSS #29 Unofficial Feedback Thread - They're Playing Our Song

hawkeye978

Here is the official gallery to give your C&C for DSS#29

Gallery Found Here...

Once more into the fray. This unofficial feedback thread is a catch-all of sorts, lets make it happen:thumb

Anyway, let's start feedback on DSS #29!!

This thread is:

• a place to post a list of your top ten favorites. (be heard, and let everyone know what images moved you.)
• a place to post your "the making of my image"
• a place to ask someone "how did they do that?"(for us all to see:D )

Feedback is an important part of the photographic process. While those selected as finalists get feedback from the judges and those who vote, others are never quite sure where they stand. So share your thoughts both in this thread and with comments in the actual gallery. Constructive criticism should always be welcome.

It's easy to post thumbnails (with help from our Moderator).

With the image selected in the gallery, copy its URL from your browser, add "-Th.jpg" to the end, delete the jumble of numbers and letters preceding the hashtag (#), change "gallery" to "photos" and that's it.

Example

Change this url

http://challenges.smugmug.com/gallery/7821877_VUfQz#508585564_r5YQB

To this

http://challenges.smugmug.com/photos/508585564_r5YQB-Th.jpg

Happy Feedbacking :scratch

jeffgroves

Congratulations and good luck!
*Edited - After looking at the favorites of others, I realized that I missed one of my very favorites .. so here are my favorite 12 (up from my original "top 10")

Congratulations to all who entered and good luck judges trying to pick only 10!

I posted my entry at 7:55 this morning, only because I was out of town this weekend and just happened to take a photo on Friday night that seemed to fit the challenge. This one was a lot tougher that I thought it was going to be!

Boy, was it difficult to only pick 10 out of so many great images. Here are the ones that moved me the most and seemed to respond well to the challenge. There were many others that I loved, but I narrowed my favorites to the following (in no particular order):



Good luck to everyone and again, great work!

dlplumer

This may be the best round ever in terms of SO MANY HIGH QUALIY photos. I couldn't pick 10 and there are so many more that I could have easily put in here.

MikeK

Once again, very hard to choose. This round seemed to have a much higher percentage of landscape type images than normal.

Here are some of my favorites in no particular order...

hawkeye978

My cut at a Top 10 (or thereabouts). No particular order, etc., etc. etc. Standard disclaimers apply.




Fixed security issues

dlplumer

hawkeye978 wrote:

My cut at a Top 10 (or thereabouts). No particular order, etc., etc. etc. Standard disclaimers apply.

Hey Hawkeye, no photos showing. Please read Hawkeye's directions

hawkeye978

dlplumer wrote:

Hey Hawkeye, no photos showing. Please read Hawkeye's directions

OK, I'm confused...The pictures show on my screen and in your quote of my post. Anyone else having problems???

richtersl

If you created a collage and stored on your site, make sure that the gallery's settings allow for display on external sites.

bf2015

When I open the page it say that IE has bloacked content because of certificate errors but after I right-click the message and choose show blocked material, everything shows fine.

KevXman

As usual so many awsome images! Great job everyone.



Now comes the hard part. Which one do I actually vote for.
— Kevin

hawkeye978

bf2015 wrote:

When I open the page it say that IE has bloacked content because of certificate errors but after I right-click the message and choose show blocked material, everything shows fine.

That may be the problem. I'm sitting behind a corporate server and it may have messed up the security settings. Depending on your individual settings it may not let anything through until you bless the settings.

Katmitchell

Soooooooo many super shots entered...

You guys are awesome


Good luck to all the finalists...

bf2015

What a great challenge and awesome entries!

Here are a few a my favorites in order of the gallery:

WhatSheSaw

I'm amazed at how little commonality there is between the top 10 lists. And a lot of my faves did not make the finalists!

Great job everyone!

Kinkajou

I agree, there's a huge amount of variety in preference! Great round, everyone. A ton of creativity here!

Here's my top eleven in gallery order (tried so hard to choose just ten, but couldn't!):



Thanks to those who liked my bayou shot

Greensquared

This one had me seriously challenged in the judging. My thoughts went back and forth between whether I knew the song, or even liked the song. If I knew it, and knew the words, it would also affect how I thought because it is then more difficult to match the song with the title alone, and not consider whether it captures the entire message of the lyrics and feel of the tune. In the end I had to go for a mindset of "Which images are awesome photography in their own rights, but are indeed a description of the title", and a little bit of "Could I see this as an album cover?"

I will post my feedback on my picks, and as always, if anyone else wants to PM me I will give them feedback on their image. I will state here, however, that richtersl, cmurph, JAG and achambers all had images that I really, really hated to cut. And there were many more that were extremely close calls...hmmm, to vote for just one will be VERY tough indeed. Well done everyone!

Greensquared

Wow...did I really kill this thread?

HoofClix

Maybe for 7 hours and 58 minutes...

I think there's very little to say.. I can hardly pick a top 30, so a top 10 list of faves is out of the question..

WhatSheSaw

I am going to have the same trouble (being behind a corporate firewall) as Hawkeye, so here is my list. Then I'll try the thumbnails.

richtersl - The Vacant Chair
divamum - Song to the Moon
ghinson - No Line on the Horizon
davev - Desperado
Kinkajou - Born on a Bayou
Tylwydd - La Carmagnole
dnie - It's Not Easy Being Green
cmurph - Light My Fire
achambers - These Boots Are Made for Walkin'
KevXman - Blue Train



There are at least a dozen more that I might have picked if you asked me yesterday or tomorrow. Great round!

OK. I don't get it. I don't even see little boxes with red Xs in them. If you click on the link, it takes you right to it.

MOD EDIT: Changed URL tags to IMG tags.

Tentacion

Grrrrrrrrr
Well this bites, I missed the deadline by 1 day.....I thought it was until the end of July.....

Anyways this was to be my entry,

Interpretation of the song by Diana Ross, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Ain't No Valley Low Enough, Ain't No River Wide Enough, To Keep Me From Getting To You."




Continued Good Wishes to all the entrants.....

and Congrats to the Finalists..

Peace,
Donna P. aka Tentacion

richtersl

Thanks to Dan, Mike, and WhatSheSaw for including "The Vacant Chair" in their top 10. Emily, thanks for the honorable mention.

This was a very competitive field and with a total of 19 images to vote on, the judges managed to agree on only one image. I think this is a first.

Hey Donna -- that doesn't look like Florida to me.

pyry

jeffgroves wrote:

*Edited - After looking at the favorites of others, I realized that I missed one of my very favorites .. so here are my favorite 12 (up from my original "top 10")

Thanks for picking my image

I guess my entry fell down exactly like I was thinking it would, not a lot of people know what going on in it. It's a shot of noctilucent clouds, clouds that form so high up that they shine through the night; a northern summer midnight special. I entered it anyway, because I was too busy to come up with anything else - that one is getting published.

ic4u

A little late, I know, but wanted to share the images that pulled at me the most, and it was very difficult to get it to 10, so in no particular order(and sorry no thumbnails), here they are

richters - The Vacant Chair
MrsCue - Pretty in Pink
divamum - Song to the Moon
jeffmeyers - City Love
dlplumer - A New Day Has Come
Kinkajou - Born on a Bayou
heatherfeather - Angel
ultravox - Mama
hawkeye - Summer in the City
Aaronnelson - Anakin's Dark Deeds

Kinkajou

pyry wrote:

I guess my entry fell down exactly like I was thinking it would, not a lot of people know what going on in it. It's a shot of noctilucent clouds, clouds that form so high up that they shine through the night; a northern summer midnight special. I entered it anyway, because I was too busy to come up with anything else - that one is getting published.

I don't think that was the problem... it was a very beautiful shot, but there were so many good ones to choose from that really did a creative job on conveying the song titles that it was really difficult to narrow it down. I wonder if part of the problem (and I'll admit it was a bit for me) was that the song was not as recognizable as some others - it just turned into a great shot for me, not a great shot conveying a song's title/feeling/whatever. I could've been less lazy and actually looked it up though.... that's my bad!

Llywellyn

Popping in to say my comments will be up this week, I promise. Also, my judging technique was much the same as Em's this round: I first chose images that really impressed me technically and creatively, then narrowed my choices by really looking at the song title and the image together to see if the image really fit the title.

bf2015

Tentacion wrote:

Well this bites, I missed the deadline by 1 day.....I thought it was until the end of July.....

Anyways this was to be my entry,

Interpretation of the song by Diana Ross, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Ain't No Valley Low Enough, Ain't No River Wide Enough, To Keep Me From Getting To You."




Continued Good Wishes to all the entrants.....

and Congrats to the Finalists..

Peace,
Donna P. aka Tentacion

Ahhh...Smith Rock!! Some amazing climbing in Oregon, especially Monkey Face! I take it you're a climber?

JAG

Thanks for those who considered mine. I am like many here in saying that there are so many entries that were really superb! I am glad that I didn't have to judge this one. Very difficult indeed. Voting was very difficult too!

Awsome work by all!

pyry

Kinkajou wrote:

I don't think that was the problem... it was a very beautiful shot, but there were so many good ones to choose from that really did a creative job on conveying the song titles that it was really difficult to narrow it down. I wonder if part of the problem (and I'll admit it was a bit for me) was that the song was not as recognizable as some others - it just turned into a great shot for me, not a great shot conveying a song's title/feeling/whatever. I could've been less lazy and actually looked it up though.... that's my bad!

Well that's the other thing, I did this whole thing the wrong way around

I didn't find a vantage point for Highway to Hell (you guessed it, ACDC), then I was too busy to shoot Nosey Joe (Brian Setzer Orchestra) and so had to try and come up with a title for an image that already existed - the fit is a bit loose

But it's ok, the picture is getting a whole page in the local astronomy magazine which is worth about 5 pints so I'm good

Tentacion

Hey Richters and bf2015

Nope not Florida, I'm in Oregon at the moment, personal and business to some extent, I hadn't been back here in a few years.

bf2015, I am flattered, must mean I got a good capture when you recognized the area so quickly. Nope NOT a real Rock Climber, just one with a camera, I don't do the ropes and such, but I climb the trail, and get into the crevices for exploration.. Smith Rock is a fascinating area, but I think the WORST part of the whole hike/rock climb was when your coming back, and hiking up that slope back to the exit....GRRRRRRRR. I'll share the link with you when I get back home, got some great captures of that area, was a little sad the the river was so calm this day. The sun was beating down but there sure were a lot of climbers out there.

Anyways, have a good one all.
Peace,
Donna P.

divamum

Wow. Just... WOW.

Sorry I've been AWOL, folks - although I did manage to pop in, I got sidelined by two other photog projects during this period so my attentions went there instead of the feedback threads. I've been reading even when not posting and this round has really pushed things to yet another level (again. Where does this all stop?! Every round's higher quality than the last!! )

It's almost ludicrous to have top picks in a round of this quality - you could pick at least 4 different groups of top 10s and still have a great collection of images. However, the following really stood out for me.

richtersl - The Vacant Chair
photo-bug: Magic Bus
MikeK - Fly Like an Eagle
dlplumer - A New Day Has Come
dseidman - Across the Universe
ghinson -- No Line on the Horizon
Kinkajou - Born on a Bayou
heatherfeather- Angel
ultravox - Mama
tsk1979 - Total Eclipse of the Heart

A behind-the-scenes on my image to follow...

divamum

Thanks to all who included mine in their picks. Of all the images I've ever prepared for the challenges, I think I'm most proud of this one. Not only because it's the first composite I've ever managed to pull off, but I captured the mood and sound of the scene in Rusalka pretty much as I had envisioned it in my head.

As the images in the exif gallery show, it was a daylight shot which had to be turned into this moonscape. EEK! Thanks to the great feedback from all of you (for which renewed thanks), after several days of beating my head against the wall trying to paste the moon into the landscape's sky and then turning it into "night" - hitting all sorts of problems because of the sky, clouds and dynamic range which kept artefacting when I tried to darken it - I realised that if I reversed the process and pasted the landscape into the moon shot it was easier because I didn't have to worry about that expanse of sky, or blending the edges of the moon into a new BG.

That got me to this:




Not so pretty, the clouds in particular being a bug-bear. While shooting the lake I'd had the sense to take some "ripples" (from a completely different part of the water) because I thought they might come in handy, so I added those in a layer over the water - by selecting "multiply" for the blend, they darkened the water (effectively masking out the clouds). I then added a hue/saturation layer at 70% opacity of dark blue using the "colorize" setting. I tinkered with adding/subtracting it in different areas to get the moon-kissed look by using the white/black brush until it looked the way I wanted.



Perhaps the biggest problem - what to do about that clumsy join where the trees met the sky in the other photograph? I spent (literally) days messing around with this and eventually wound up using the patch tool to get some treetops from the main trees to hide the remnants of the blue sky from the landscape shot, and then used the healing brush along the join to blend it down. Pure idiot luck - I was so frustrated I pretty much started clicking on every tool in the program to try and find something that would work and... eureka!

t was pretty easy to add the moon reflection to the water - it took three copies of it blended in "screen" which miraculously made the black background around it vanish, and also gave it a bit of a glow. I also added some "waves" texturing to it to complete the illusion.

I then added a brightness/contrast layer to lift the brightness of the total image and... that's pretty much it.

Thanks again to all of you for holding my hand through this one! I'm so happy I pressed ahead with it because I learned a TON, mostly about how to blend layers (a basic skill, but one I didn't really know much about before this - you can bet I'll try just about every blend option possible from here on out!)